CH 7

Chapter 7: Shooting scene

The location of this shooting murder case was a magnificent old mansion standing on Fulong Mountain in the south of the city.

This mansion was built by a foreigner during the Republic of China. Hidden in the green mountains and forests, it had a small garden with a fountain. The doors and windows were in Baroque style and exquisitely carved. However, the fact that it had been abandoned for a number of years, had been subjected to wind and frost damage, and had mottled rust added an unsettlingly eerie atmosphere. The previous owner of this house was a well-known big entrepreneur in the city. Later, the whole family immigrated for unknown reasons, and the house was not sold. Such a large mansion had been abandoned in the mountains and gradually became a “ghost house” among the surrounding residents.

This mansion had probably not been so lively for more than ten years. Numerous police officers were manning it as it was cordoned off from the outside. A group of students stood by the guardrail, huddling together for warmth with faces full of horror. They were the ones who called the police when they found the dead body. Now, in the middle of the night, there were quite a few people sneaking around outside the mansion. He Wei glanced at them and knew they were reporters.

“The people’s police are for the people, so shouldn’t they let us rest a bit?” Chong Zhen yawned with a tired face and raised the cordon. He Wei followed in, put on plastic gloves, and handed him a pair along the way: “You have rested too thoroughly, haven’t you? It knocked on your door for a full ten minutes.”

“F*ck, I drank more than you; isn’t it natural for me to sleep deeply?”

“Who made you drunk? Who made you sad and weep? You were the one who made yourself drink like that.”

“Hey, you’re so boring. Do you know what a ‘middle-aged crisis’ is? All you ever think about are cases. You’re so heartless. What a waste of a pretty face”

The two stepped into the opposite door of the mansion with each other. As soon as they entered, there was a gust of wind, and Chong Zhen rubbed his arms: “It can’t be a haunted case again, right? Recently, my luck has been low, and my grandma said I’m prone to evil things.”

He Wei looked up to observe the terrain. The mansion was divided into upper and lower floors. The living room was quite large. There was a long and wide spiral staircase leading to the second floor on the left and right sides. This layout was very similar to the wealthy villas often seen in TV dramas. Whether it was from the gilded railings or the exquisite decorative carvings in the house, it was enough to see the luxury and beauty of this mansion in the past, but it was a pity that things were different now. The glory was no longer there, and everything that came into view was a dilapidated scene.

Chong Zhen looked around and exclaimed, “Hey, isn’t this hall bigger than your house? It’s enough for a conference!”

“Not just for the conference, but also for the memorial service.” He Wei looked around downstairs and found that all his colleagues hadn’t arrived yet. Zheng Youqing and Yun Xiaoxiao were not on the scene, but Du Ruanlan and her little apprentice, Luo Ying, rushed to the front as always. They were in the middle of the living room, and they had already started the preliminary autopsy.

Xiao Chen squatted on the floor to extract the shoe prints, and Chong Zhen lowered his head: “Hey, how are these so many footprints? Can you tell which were from whom?”

“This scene was discovered by the students who came to explore. The footprints coming in from the door are fairly clear. When they got there, they probably saw the corpse and were so scared that they ran around. This is a special test of our ability to detect traces.” Xiao Chen sighed, saying, “A lot of them are stacked together, so I might as well take them all back and separate them slowly. For stones, bring plastic wrap! Big ones!”

No wonder these students had nothing to do and went to the wilderness. It turned out that they were exploring. Unfortunately, before they could finish their adventure, they bumped into a dead body as soon as they came in. They were so afraid that they wouldn’t dare play any haunted house adventure escape room in this life.

Chong Zhen searched the downstairs room with a flashlight. He Wei walked to the corpse, glanced down, and saw an extremely good-looking face.

This was a young man lying straight on the floor; blood splatters were scattered around the body, and there was a pool of blood underneath. His eyes were tightly closed, his facial features were profound and handsome, and every angle from the bridge of his nose to his jaw was impeccable like a masterpiece carefully carved by God. With such a delicate and eye-catching appearance, if he opened his eyes, he would definitely attract everyone’s attention. Even if he was lying there with a pale face and lifeless body at the moment, there was a kind of desolate and decadent beauty.

After seeing so many corpses, He Wei felt a strange feeling that he had never felt before: What a pity to die young.

“Lan-jie, what’s the situation?”

“The rigor mortis is very high, the cornea is moderately turbid, and the pupils can barely be seen through, and some of the corpse spots are still faint. It is preliminarily estimated that the time of death is within 24 hours.” Du Ruanlan opened the man’s blood-stained shirt, revealing a blood hole: “There is a circular wound about 7 mm on the left chest. There is a reddish impact circle around the wound, and there is a black wipe ring on the inner edge of the hole. There is only one bullet hole in the whole body. It seems that he was killed by a single shot. Everything was arranged very neatly, and the splattered blood around him is also a bit strange. Wait for someone to test the blood reaction at the scene later to determine whether this is the first crime scene.”

“The marksmanship was pretty good? A professional?” He Wei squatted down and observed the wound, “This size of the gun wound can be caused by 64, 77, or 54. Have you found the bullet and shell casing?”

“The bullet is in the body, and Hu Songkai is looking for the shell casing.” Du Ruanlan touched the scalpel in the box, “Do you want to cut it and take it out?”

He Wei was actually very indifferent to what Du Ruanlan asked. The conditions at the scene were not as good as those in the dissection room. If the bullet was dug out first without following the dissection procedure, it was unknown if it would affect her follow-up work. Du Ruanlan thought for a while, then retracted her hand: “It’s better to take it back to the bureau. When Xiaoxiao comes here later, she will definitely cry to death. Let’s stop stimulating the little girl directly.”

“Why?” He Wei was curious, “She knew the deceased?”

“Are there any girls who don’t know him?” Du Ruanlan looked at him with disgust and said, “Didn’t you see so many reporters coming outside? It’s all because of him. This person is the big star pianist, Cheng Zesheng.”

———

Yun Xiaoxiao appeared on the scene with red eyes. From the moment she entered the door, her mood was gloomy and depressed, and she wiped her tears quietly several times. He Wei couldn’t stand it anymore: “Xiaoxiao, why don’t you go back to rest today and go to the bureau tomorrow morning?”

Yun Xiaoxiao shook her head and said stubbornly: “No, I want to collect evidence here and catch the murderer with my own hands!”

Chong Zhen gossiped with He Wei in a low voice: “Xiaoxiao is really emotional. She is feeling so sad that I thought it was her boyfriend lying there.”

Xia Liang quietly leaned over: “King Yama’s1 work is just like this. This person’s concert is tonight, and he took the person away one step ahead of time.”

Although He Wei doesn’t chase stars, there were quite a few young girls in the bureau, and there were a lot of them like Xiaoxiao who were willing to spend money to go to the concert. Therefore, in He Wei’s eyes, their feelings were very sincere, and the so-called “if you love him, you will pay for him” was quite clearly reflected in the star-chasing girl.

Yun Xiaoxiao had only recently fallen in love with Cheng Zesheng, and she was so sad that she could imagine how much sensation this news would cause when it was announced to the whole society by outside reporters. She heard that Cheng Zesheng was not just an ordinary pianist; he won a grand prize for the glory of the country, but he was shot dead. Maybe the provincial government would send someone to watch over this case.

After the preliminary autopsy was over, Cheng Zesheng’s body was moved back to the bureau, leaving only a white line where the pile of blood was. Du Ruanlan also deliberately avoided Yun Xiaoxiao and greeted He Wei: “This case is quite special. I will go back to the bureau to work first. I will come over when you come back and solve it together with you.”

He Wei nodded. This mansion was too big. Two groups of people were dispatched to investigate together. The investigation had not been completed yet. Hu Songkai and Xia Liang were downstairs looking for bullet marks, bullet casings, and murder weapons. Chong Zhen and He Wei went to the room on the second floor to search for useful clues. Yun Xiaoxiao was very good at her job; holding a small notebook, she went to take the statements of the group of students outside.

There were only a few pieces of broken furniture left in this mansion; almost every room upstairs had been evacuated, and all that was left were cabinets and decorations, which were of no reference value. Chong Zhen wiped the cabinet casually, and the dust was several inches thick. It covered the second floor from the stairs like snow, showing that no one had ever gone up there.

“It seems that the murderer and the deceased are only active downstairs.” He Wei pushed open the rusty iron window and looked toward the back garden, “The grass below has grown half a meter tall, and there are no traces of stepping on it. The door to the backyard had not been moved. The murderer probably swaggered out from the main entrance after killing.”

Chong Zhen stood beside him and looked into the distance: “The scenery is really good, and the air is also fresh. There are mountains around, and it hasn’t rained in the past two days. A living person who leaves here will definitely leave certain traces.”

The search for the mountain had to wait until after dawn, and the two came down from upstairs and returned empty-handed. Chong Zhen saw Hu Songkai lying on the sofa with his butt pouting at first glance. He raised his legs and kicked, “ErHu, what are you doing?”

“You’re going to die. Lao Hu’s butt shouldn’t have been kicked!” Hu Songshou waved at him, “Come and see; what’s the shiny thing underneath?”

“What’s the matter? Can you still find a treasure?” Chong Zhen knelt down on the floor, got down, and flashed the flashlight under the cabinet, “It’s round and reflective, like glass or crystal; we have to hook it out to see.”

Xia Liang took a stick and handed it over: “Brothers, use this.”

Chong Zhen poked a few times with the small stick and pulled out the round thing—a simple, unremarkable glass marble that could be seen everywhere in the market, and one could buy a bag for five yuan.

The three of them stared at the glass marble, full of childhood memories. Chong Zhen turned on the flashlight and observed it carefully. Given its cleanliness, it was likely that it rolled out of the deceased or the murderer and fell under the floor cabinet.

“What are you doing here?” He Wei approached, saw the marbles in his hand with red and white patterns inside, and said with a smile, “I have this.”

“Who doesn’t have it? When I was a child, I bought a whole bag.” Chong Zhen handed it to Xia Liang, “Ask Xiao Chen to pack it in a bag and give it to their technical team.”

Hu Songkai beat his own waist. He was so old that his back hurt from doing such little work. He Wei asked, “Have you found the shell casings and the gun?”

“No, I was almost lying on the ground to search the carpet, acting as an artificial vacuum cleaner.” Hu Songkai wondered, “There is not a single bullet mark on the floor or wall, it seems that the murderer really killed the person with one shot, quite neatly. “

“Or, it might be a professional. It’s okay if you can’t find it. After Lan-jie digs out the bullet, determines the model of the gun, and judges the shooting distance based on the wound, the scene will probably be reconstructed.”

He Wei looked up and saw that Zheng Youqing hadn’t come yet, so he greeted Xiao Chen and prepared the Luminol reagent to test the blood reaction on the spot.

After spraying, the fluorescent reaction was concentrated at the corpse, and the distribution of the sprayed blood was also strange. There was an irregular shape on the right side of the corpse that was not affected. After taking the photo, He Wei squatted down, closed his eyes and simulated the scene in his mind, and gradually became sure——

It was a person. Besides the murderer and the deceased, there was a third person at the scene.

However, the traces of the third person’s existence have been obviously cleaned, and there were no footprints or fingerprints left around the body. But what was even more strange was that if they wanted to cover it up, why didn’t they do it thoroughly? Wouldn’t it be better to interfere with the luminol reagent to disrupt the police’s vision? There are so many information channels for criminals nowadays, and there are many ways to find them on Baidu with a mobile phone.

Since it was known that there might be more than two murderers, the search of the surrounding mountain roads was even more important. As soon as He Wei walked out of the mansion, a beautiful reporter with dyed brown hair rushed over, her big eyes fluttered, and she fired at him: “Captain He, do you remember me? I am Gu Meng, who did an exclusive interview with your city bureau.”

“I don’t remember.” He Wei pointed at her camera and reminded her, “We don’t give interviews at the murder scene, and we have no comment on what is being investigated. Go back.”

Gu Meng pursed her lips and wanted to get close to him, but He Wei had already ordered a few people to go with him to the mountain to search.

Hu Songkai, who stood at the door and witnessed everything, stroked his chin: “Tsk tsk tsk, just like before, cold and indifferent.”

“He’s obsessed with cleanliness and loves to investigate cases.” Chong Zhen was puzzled, “Why do pretty girls like him?”

Xia Liang, who didn’t understand the melancholy of the middle-aged man, tilted his head: “Maybe it’s because of Captain He’s good looks?”

“……” Hu Songkai and Chong Zhen each rewarded him with a hit on the head. It was really unpleasant for a child to speak the truth.