I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 64: Chapter 62: The Third Person Is Murdered

Municipal Bureau conference room.

Just as Yan Cheng finished giving his autopsy report, Su Miaoyi suddenly sucked in a sharp breath.

All eyes turned to her.

Su Miaoyi’s head was still bowed over the photographs in her hands.

Chu Xingrou, who was sitting beside her, clearly noticed her breathing suddenly grow ragged.

Zhuang Yanzheng outlined the next steps for the investigation, then dismissed everyone to get to work.

Su Miaoyi remained seated.

Chu Xingrou asked, "Sister Miaomiao, are you all right?"

"I’m fine," Su Miaoyi said. "You can go get to work."

Without another word, Chu Xingrou left the conference room.

Soon, only Su Miaoyi, Zhuang Yanzheng, and Yan Cheng remained in the conference room.

Su Miaoyi sent a message to Lu Zhishen, telling him not to leave work yet.

"Did you see something?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

Su Miaoyi nodded, tapping the two photos in her hand. "I saw these two, along with another boy, push down a pregnant woman."

Zhuang Yanzheng and Yan Cheng exchanged a glance.

"They were all wearing uniforms from Jinghai Second Middle School," Su Miaoyi said. "They looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old."

"Did they say anything?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"No," Su Miaoyi said. "The woman fell, landing on her stomach. When she turned her head, she saw three boys laughing. Then they ran away."

Zhuang Yanzheng’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Yan Cheng frowned.

"That’s all I saw," Su Miaoyi said. "I can’t be sure of the woman’s identity. She might have been a teacher."

"If they were fifteen or sixteen, this would have happened twelve or thirteen years ago," Yan Cheng said.

"We can check Zheng Bin and Han Longyu’s school records." Zhuang Yanzheng glanced at the time. "The high school should be having evening classes right now. I’ll contact the principal and head over to the school to ask some questions."

Su Miaoyi said, "I’ll go find Lu Zhishen."

"I’ll head back to the forensic medical center to see if there are any new findings," Yan Cheng said.

"Get a sketch of the third boy first. Once he’s identified, send a team over immediately," Zhuang Yanzheng ordered. "I’ll see what I can find out from the school. Also, have someone call Zheng Bin’s parents and question them again. And have someone check the hospital to see if Han Longyu’s parents can tell us anything."

"Okay," Su Miaoyi agreed.

’If this really is connected to that incident back then, the third boy is in grave danger.’

The three of them immediately split up and got to work.

Su Miaoyi was in the sketch artist’s studio.

She was describing the third boy’s appearance.

Lu Zhishen quickly finished the sketch.

However, since more than a decade had passed, the boy had grown into a man.

So, based on the sketch of him at fifteen or sixteen, Lu Zhishen created an age-progressed version showing his current appearance.

Once the sketch was done, they immediately ran it through the system for a facial match.

Feng Tao, male, twenty-eight years old.

The police department immediately dispatched officers to Feng Tao’s registered address and tried to call him, but they couldn’t get through.

After Lu Zhishen relayed the information to Zhuang Yanzheng, he and Su Miaoyi began working on a new sketch: the teacher who had called for an ambulance for the female teacher.

Zhuang Yanzheng, meanwhile, was not having much luck. It seemed the school had deliberately covered up the incident back then, erasing all traces of it.

In over a decade, the school had gone through two different principals.

He couldn’t get any information out of the current principal.

So Zhuang Yanzheng used the school’s system to investigate the teachers who had taught Han Longyu, Zheng Bin, and Feng Tao during their three years there.

Neither their homeroom teachers nor their subject teachers had been pregnant during that time.

Furthermore, no teachers had been replaced midway through the term.

’What Su Miaoyi saw couldn’t be false.’

That left only one possibility: the school’s records had been altered.

Zhuang Yanzheng then tracked down information on the principal from that year.

He was now retired.

He was no longer in Jinghai.

The phone number on file was disconnected.

Evening classes were in session at the high school.

Only the supervising teachers were in the classrooms.

As it happened, two of them had taught Zheng Bin back in the day.

Zhuang Yanzheng questioned them, but learned nothing.

As he was leaving the school, Zhuang Yanzheng received a call from Chu Xingrou.

At the hospital, Han Longyu’s parents were in poor condition. The doctor had advised against agitating them, so they hadn’t been questioned.

She had questioned Zheng Bin’s parents over the phone, and they claimed to know nothing. But she could hear the tension in their voices when she brought up the incident from years ago, even though they stuck to their story.

The couple would be arriving in Jinghai tomorrow.

After hanging up, Zhuang Yanzheng drove back to the Municipal Bureau.

By the time he arrived, the sketch of the teacher who had called the ambulance was complete and being run through the system for a match.

Meanwhile, the team sent to Feng Tao’s address sent back bad news.

They had found a body at Feng Tao’s residence. It had already begun to decompose.

Zhuang Yanzheng grabbed Yan Cheng and Su Miaoyi, and taking a team and equipment, headed immediately to the scene.

Upon arriving at the scene, the stench of decay was palpable the moment they stepped inside, strong enough to pierce through their masks.

The officer who had first arrived to find Feng Tao explained, "As we were coming up, we ran into Feng Tao’s parents. They said they hadn’t been able to reach him for a couple of days and came to check on him. They’re the ones who opened the door. When they went in and saw... the scene, they both fainted. An ambulance took them away."

Zhuang Yanzheng nodded and entered the master bedroom.

The body was on the bed.

There was no mascot costume.

But the method of dismemberment was the same.

The body had been dismembered, and the severed parts were then stitched back together with fine thread.

And on the wall above the headboard, a single word was written in large characters: "USELESS."

Upon entering the bedroom, everyone first glanced at the corpse, then turned to look at the large word on the wall.

A single word, in red.

A silent provocation, humiliation, and mockery.

Zhuang Yanzheng stared at it for a few seconds before saying, "Let’s get to work."

The team immediately fanned out.

Yan Cheng and his assistant went to examine the body, while Zhuang Yanzheng and Su Miaoyi went to inspect the writing on the wall.

It had been applied with red spray paint.

It looked like it had been there for a while.

And the small can of spray paint was sitting right on the nightstand.

Su Miaoyi checked it; there were no fingerprints.

"I get the sense that this killer really hates the police," Su Miaoyi said. "He could have found better ways to hide the bodies, but instead he leaves them in relatively conspicuous places, as if waiting for them to be found. It feels more like a taunt."

As she spoke, she looked toward Zhuang Yanzheng.

Zhuang Yanzheng naturally understood what she was implying.

’There might have been a miscarriage of justice over a decade ago, one involving the police department.’

"Preliminary time of death: over two weeks ago," Yan Cheng announced.

"Get the security footage from building management—the complex entrance and this building’s entrance. I want everything from the last two weeks or so. Copy it all and bring it back," Zhuang Yanzheng ordered a nearby officer.

Su Miaoyi’s attention turned to a charging cable on the nightstand.

The cable was still plugged into the wall, but the phone was gone.

She searched for it but couldn’t find it, then went to check the living room.

There were no signs of a struggle.

’How could a healthy adult male not put up a fight when an intruder broke in?’

Su Miaoyi went back to inspect the front door.

There were no signs of forced entry.

However... there was a mounting bracket on the door.

From its position on the outside, it looked like a video doorbell had been removed.

She touched it with her hand.

An image flashed through her mind: being jabbed in the side of the neck with a syringe by someone dressed as a delivery driver.

It was a fleeting image.

Gone in an instant.

Su Miaoyi stood at the door, looking around.

The vision had taken place right here, at this very doorway.

’The killer posed as a delivery driver.’

...

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