Li Cunhou confessed to the crime of murdering Lu Jin. Wu Hao confessed to the fact of murdering Li Cuicai. Based on his testimony, the Pursuit Team quickly summoned Wang Guozhi to the interrogation room again.
“Tell me again about your whereabouts on the 16th.”
They had asked this before. Wang Guozhi rattled it off fluently. “The night before, I stayed over at a friend’s house—you know about that. The guy owed me some money, so I slept at his doorstep. On the morning of the 16th, I went home around 11, took a shower, and grabbed my resume. The whole day after that, I was out interviewing. You must have checked that already. Then, around 6 p.m., Lao Chen called me to play cards, so I went.”
“Lao Chen said you were the one who called him to play cards.”
“Must’ve remembered it wrong. It’s just a tiny detail, no big deal.” Wang Guozhi shrugged it off.
“On the night of the crime, you were clearly on your way home but suddenly detoured to Chen’s place to play cards. Were you deliberately leaving your wife at home to be murdered?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Tang Shen sneered coldly. “The one who killed your wife was Wu Hao. You know him, right?”
“Yeah, we know each other. We play cards together sometimes.” Wang Guozhi fumed. “You’ve already figured out he killed my wife. What does that have to do with me?”
“That’s for you to say.” Bai Zhu chimed in. “You knew about it, right? That your wife was sleeping with him.”
“What!” Wang Guozhi froze.
“Keep pretending.” Bai Zhu pointed at him. “You found out your wife was cheating with him, so you decided to get rid of her once and for all, frame him in the process, take out both of them, and live the good life off the insurance money. What a perfect plan.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know anything.” Wang Guozhi’s lips trembled as his face drained of color.
“Wu Hao can testify that the one who called him was you.”
“I didn’t call anyone!”
“And in the early hours of the morning on the night of the crime, you went home. Were you checking if Li Cuicai was dead? After confirming she was, you went back to Lao Chen’s. Lao Chen confirmed you went outside the little villa to use the toilet—for nearly half an hour. If you took the electric bike via the shortcut, it’s definitely possible to make a quick round trip from your house to Lao Chen’s.”
“No, I was just taking a shit… Besides, it wasn’t just me—my son went too, and he dawdled for almost an hour. I finally had a good hand, hoping he’d give me some advice to win more. Damn kid acted like he was glued to the toilet. Don’t think I don’t know—he just didn’t want to help me. And without me busting my ass every day to earn money, where would he get the medical bills for his treatment?”
“Were you winning gambling money, or the fee for hiring a hitman to kill your wife?” Bai Zhu saw his hopeless expression. “Your bank card had a withdrawal of several thousand on the 16th. After subtracting the cost of the murder weapon and staging the scene, the amount matches what Wu Hao received pretty closely. How do you explain that?”
“You’ve really got it wrong. There’s no way I’d kill her!”
“You discovered your wife was cheating, so you wrote up a murder plan, tricked her into buying insurance, then posed as a stranger and called Wu Hao to hire him for the kill.
“On the 16th, you withdrew several thousand from your bank card and took a knife from home, putting them together in a bag—that’s why the fruit knife had Li Cunhou’s fingerprints on it. Then you handed the money and knife to Wu Hao.
“After that, you pretended to go job hunting. The interview company confirmed you were distracted and out of it. On the way back, you remembered the tragedy about to unfold at home, so you detoured to your buddy’s place and spent the night there to distance yourself completely. Midway, to make sure she was really dead, you faked needing the toilet and went home to check. The next day, after the Vice Squad Officers finished processing the scene, you showed up with your son.”
“That’s complete bullshit!” Wang Guozhi’s face turned red all the way to his neck. He glared furiously, looking like he wanted to kill the two in front of him.
Bai Zhu said, “We’ve got witnesses and evidence. You can’t deny it. Hmph, who rushes to claim insurance money right after their wife dies? Not even a hint of grief—that was a living person! Your wife of decades, sharing your bed!”
“She gave me green hats! Why the hell should I grieve?”
“So you admit it—you already knew about Li Cuicai and Wu Hao’s affair.”
“I didn’t say that. You just told me now.”
“Denying it now won’t help.” Tang Shen stood up and waved his hand. The Vice Squad Officers outside cuffed him and took him away.
“Now it’s all cleared up.” Bai Zhu stretched lazily. “Xu Nuo guessed right. When a wife is murdered, the husband is suspect number one.”
“Pretty much. You learn it after handling enough cases—spouses know each other best, fall out the easiest, and are the simplest to kill.” Tang Shen packed up the case files on the table. “Li Cunhou had nothing to do with this case. Too bad he couldn’t provide much on the Lu Jin case either.”
The two sorted Li Cuicai’s case materials and handed them to Fang Si Ting.
At that moment, Fang Si Ting was in Xu An’s office.
“No suspicious persons at all?”
“Yeah.” Xu An rubbed his eyes. “I’ve personally watched the footage from these past few days, back and forth three times. I even ran facial recognition on everyone coming and going for the past year with the latest smart program—hundreds of times. Nothing suspicious.”
“Copy it for me.” Fang Si Ting said.
“No need, just use mine.” Xu An yielded his seat. His computer screen was the largest and highest resolution in the entire Pursuit Team. He didn’t believe that after his own eyes and the best program had gone over it multiple times, Fang Si Ting could find any flaws.
Yawning, Xu An went to grab dinner first and brought back a boxed meal for Fang Si Ting too.
“What’s this taste?” He took a bite and grimaced.
“It’s all from the cafeteria downstairs. What, does Xu Nuo’s taste different from mine?” Xu An said.
Fang Si Ting fell silent and shoveled the food into his mouth in big bites.
“Find anything?” Xu An slumped nearby and asked.
“Yeah.”
Xu An’s eyes widened in disbelief as he sat up straight. “You really found something?”
“Look.” Fang Si Ting pulled up the footage from 12:43 a.m. on the 16th. A delivery rider in a yellow vest carried a bag of food into the complex.
He then pulled up the 13:36 footage—the same guy, now wearing a mask and helmet, wiping sweat from his arm sleeve, hurrying out.
The interval in between was way too long.
“He was scouting the place.” Fang Si Ting said. “Just a few hours before Li Cunhou planned to make his move.”
It was even possible that the Li siblings buying scissors and going after Lu Jin had been instigated and used by him.
Xu An was speechless for a long time.
Delivery riders came and went a lot around mealtimes, all in similar clothes and builds. He really hadn’t paid attention to when they entered or left.
“Who do you think this is?” So bundled up, even if they found him, they wouldn’t know who it was.
“Xiao Fen.” Fang Si Ting spat out the two words coldly, his gaze fixed darkly on the slim figure on the screen.
“So sure?” Xu An looked baffled. How could he tell?
Fang Si Ting’s face showed mockery. “He thought by scheming these two cases, keeping us running around like headless chickens, he and Ou Yu could rest easy?”
Xu An didn’t respond, just as Tang Shen and Bai Zhu arrived to deliver the case files.
After flipping through them, Fang Si Ting stood and instructed, “Deputy Team Leader Tang, keep watching the Lu Jin case. Captain Bai and I are going to catch Xiao Fen.”
Tomorrow at noon was the deadline. Besides cracking the case, they had to catch people, and time was tight.
Tang Shen shook his head, muttering grumpily under his breath, “What’s the difference between recording this show and my normal job? My boss tricked me, saying it was like a vacation.”
“Boss, you finally noticed me. Xiao Fen and Ou Yu have been quiet these past few days—we can’t catch them, but whenever we lose sight, they pop up again. I have a bad feeling.” Tang Shen fretted, but Bai Zhu was thrilled. “If you don’t come, even if we crack the case, I won’t catch them. You can’t keep favoring Tang Shen and ignore me, right?”
“Pathetic.” Tang Shen laughed and cursed as he hugged the materials and left the interrogation room. He saw Xu Nuo staring blankly at the info on the screen wall.
“The case is closed. What’s left to look at?”
“Learning from it, so I can catch up to Inspector Fang.” Xu Nuo said full of ambition, then immediately puzzled. “I have a few questions. The more I think, the more confused I get.”
“Any issues?” Tang Shen put the file bag into the nearby cabinet.
“Look, if Wang Guozhi hired Wu Hao, then his suggested method has a problem.”
“How so?” Tang Shen asked.
Fang Si Ting had specifically told him before leaving that Xu Nuo noticed details—chat with him more, might get unexpected gains.
“I was there when Inspector Fang interrogated Wang Guozhi, and I know the couple’s daily routes and range.”
Xu Nuo pulled up a map on the screen and marked it.
“Wu Hao said Wang Guozhi told him to ambush in this alley, pretend to be a passerby robber. But that alley is full of residents’ trash daily. Li Cuicai never went that way—instead, Wang Guozhi took shortcuts through there to save steps. Everyone knows alleys like that. How wouldn’t the mastermind know Li Cuicai avoided it? The plan he suggested wasn’t feasible.”
“Doesn’t prove much. Committing the crime outside is too risky.”
“Then he said the mastermind suggested luring Li Cuicai to sit down for a one-stab kill. What’s the logic?” Xu Nuo stared at him unblinkingly.
Tang Shen realized in a flash. “Height.”
To avoid her making noise and alerting neighbors, the safest was a throat slash.
But height was a big issue.
The killer was shorter than the victim.
From the crime scene, Li Cuicai hadn’t been sitting—Wu Hao slit her throat easily because he was a head taller.
The plan before the crime was based on deductions about the victim.
“Their original plan wasn’t to kill Li Cuicai at all!” Tang Shen broke out in cold sweat on his back.
These past days, they’d focused entirely on Li Cuicai’s relationships—suddenly, all that effort was wasted.
Now, only 16 hours left until the First Episode deadline.
What to do?
Tang Shen reopened the file box and immediately called the Forensics Team members. Except for those still testing evidence from the other fugitives, the remaining three or four re-examined every piece of evidence in this case.
Xu Nuo adjusted his rainbow glasses, restored the screen, checked the time—7 p.m.
His Inspector Fang still hadn’t clocked out.
Hadn’t paid him any attention either.
“Where’s Inspector Fang?”
Tang Shen turned and saw Xu Nuo’s pleading little look. He squeezed out time from his busyness. “He went to pursue Xiao Fen. Oh, if he’s chasing people, who cracks the Lu Jin case?”
What a headache.
He swallowed, pulled out his phone, and hesitantly reported the situation to Fang Si Ting on the other end.
After the call ended, he let out a long breath.
“Deputy Team Leader Tang seems really scared of the boss.” Xu Nuo said.
“It’s not fear. This was our work mistake. The boss is a perfectionist—I feel guilty. So many suspicious details in this case went unnoticed. Maybe because I treated it like a variety show instead of a real case, my attitude was off.”
Tang Shen spoke, but his eyes shone brighter. “Haven’t had such an interesting case in ages.”
As long as you like it.
Xu Nuo adjusted his flashy glasses and looked at the real-time surveillance feed from Xu An’s screen nearby.
