My Lovely Wife is a Forensic Doctor - Chapter 190
Chapter 190 Suspecting Feng Rubing
“Make way! Make way!” The medical staff member ran and wheeled a cart past Rong Jian. The wheels created jarring sounds due to the friction with the ground, drowning out the mumbling and long sigh.
“Are you the patient’s family?”
“Yes.” Rong Jian immediately pulled himself back to reality and stared nervously at the doctor. “How is she doing? Is she in a bad state?”
When the doctor pulled off his mask, he scanned Rong Jian from head to toe and asked, “What is your relationship to her?”
“I’m her… brother.” Rong Jian stopped short of claiming himself as her boyfriend when he saw Feng Rubing being wheeled out from the emergency room by a nurse. He hurriedly approached them and asked, “How are you feeling?”
“She’s okay,” the doctor answered on behalf of Feng Rubing and gestured for Rong Jian to follow him. “Here’s the prescription. Pay and get your meds.”
“Oh, okay.” Rong Jian gave a deep look at the pale Feng Rubing and turned around to hurry up behind the doctor.
In the office, the doctor did not rush to write a prescription. Instead, he asked Rong Jian with a somber expression, “What type of challenges and setbacks in life that your sister has recently faced?”
“Challenges? Setbacks?” Rong Jian was stunned by the question as the doctor looked at him quizzically. “Are you her real brother? Why do you seem that you don’t care about her at all?”
“Uh… I’m indeed her brother. It’s just that I have been busy at work and neglected her. What challenges and setbacks has she come across lately?”
“Are you throwing the question back at me?” The doctor rolled his eyes. “If you have no clue as her brother, how would I know about it, given that I’ve just taken on her case?”
Rong Jian felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry about that. I’m not putting in enough effort as her brother. Uh, by the way, is it impossible to give her a prescription without knowing what distress she went through?”
“Well, that’s not the case. I just wanted to give the family a gentle reminder that you have to take her psychological block head on to solve the problem.” The doctor grabbed his computer mouse and turned back to the screen.
“Taking her psychological block head on…” Rong Jian mumbled, repeating after the doctor. Could Li Jianyun be her psychological block?
No, no. At least Rong Jian hoped not. He wished that she was unrelated in any way to this homicide.
“Get the meds at the pharmacy. After her injections, bring her home for a good rest.”
“Doesn’t she need to be hospitalized?”
“She requested not to be hospitalized. In her words, staying in the hospital would make her more depressed.” At this point, the doctor changed his tone. “Of course, if you could persuade her, I highly recommend that she gets warded for close observation.”
After considering the options, Rong Jian stood up. “If she doesn’t want to be hospitalized, then I will listen to her. Thank you, doctor.”
Then, he hurried out of the doctor’s office to make the payment and receive the prescription meds at the pharmacy counter. Next, he handed the meds over at the nurses’ station. When the nurse was done with the required injections, he entered the room to meet up with Feng Rubing.
Compared to before, her complexion was slightly livelier but she remained a little dazed. Upon seeing him, the expression on her face remained unchanged and she merely stood up slowly from the chair.
He felt very sorry upon seeing her feeble condition and quickly went up to provide support. “I’ll send you back.”
“Where?”
“Back to your home.”
Feng Rubing abruptly pushed him away as she flashed a faint smile at him. “Since you are now suspecting me, shouldn’t you turn me in at the police station?”
“Rubing! I did not suspect you. I just wanted to hear your explanation! I have too many doubts in my head, waiting to be cleared by you.”
“I have nothing more to explain. If you can prove that I’m the murderer, come arrest me.” After that, she grabbed the bag from his hands and went out of the room. However, she spun around too fast and was a little dizzy, prompting her to put her hand against the wall for support.
“Are you alright?” Rong Jian instantly gripped her arm as he grumbled sorrily, “You’re very weak now. Why did you turn down the hospitalization and the IV drip?”
She did not reply to him. Instead, she coldly shoved him away as she shuffled out of the room in unstable steps.
Behind her, Rong Jian was running and calling her name. When he saw her leaving without hesitation, he came to a halt in despair and looked on with pain until she faded away in his vision. Unable to make her stay, he slowly dragged his steps to walk out of the hospital with a heart much heavier than his pace.
Never had he thought that she was acquainted to the victim of the third murder case, Li Jianyun. Not only that, they seemed quite close because they had been calling each other. At nine last night, Li Jianyun even made a call to her before he met his fate.
He didn’t mind that at all. However, the moment he saw a women’s panty printed with Ali the Fox at Li Jianyun’s bedside, he could not help but feel anxious.
There was a good reason for the nervousness. Qiqi was madly in love with the cartoon character Ali the Fox. That was why Feng Rubing had Ali the Fox all over her house, from bedroom, study to furniture and phone case. Even Qiqi’s pajamas, gloves, bags and panties were in the cartoon pattern. Not only was she obsessed with Ali the Fox, she also forced it on people around her.
Every time a festival came around, Qiqi would send a gift to Rong Jian. Having bought him car accessories and car keychain printed with Ali the Fox, she insisted that he should put the items on. As a result, his Ali the Fox accessories were laughed at by Liu Xiaofan. Even so, Rong Jian had taken a liking to Qiqi, so he accepted her good will even if he would be laughed at. As for Qiqi, she loved Rong Jian and always called him her brother-in-law whenever Feng Rubing was not around. She even thought of ways to be a matchmaker to Rong Jian and Feng Rubing.
“Don’t worry. As long as I’m around, you will one day be my brother-in-law! I know my sister always acts rudely to me and yells at me all the time. but she really cares about me a lot. You can tell by her wearing a matching outfit with me when we go out. I’ll let you in on a secret: our panties are the same series from Ali the Fox. To tell them apart, I took the design with the cartoon pattern on the left. My sister’s pattern is on the right. Hehe. Aren’t we cute?”
Rong Jian felt that Feng Qiqi’s laughter was still echoing in his ear. However, her cute laugh took a sinister turn because he had found a panty with an Ali the Fox pattern on its right.
Of course, he was not terrified by the sight of the panty. The reason behind his panic was his discovery of an unfinished Chinese character written in blood and covered with a wooden plank.
The unfinished character displayed a dot aligned with a rising stroke on its left, and a horizontal stroke on its right. This happened to be the first three strokes of the character ‘Feng’. Therefore, Rong Jian did not have to run a test to tell that the blood was Li Jianyun’s.
Li Jianyun’s time of death was between ten thirty yesterday to twelve at midnight today. Last night around nine, Rong Jian received a call from Feng Rubing, asking if Feng Qiqi was at his place. It happened that Feng Qiqi’s laptop suddenly broke down and she wanted to call Rong Jian over for technical help. Feng Rubing told her little sister that it was too late and stopped her from making the call. They clashed violently and Feng Qiqi rushed out in her pajamas at the heat of the moment. When Feng Rubing realized that Qiqi was not at Rong Jian’s place, she hurried out to search for her little sister, concerned that she would fall sick from wandering on a snowy night. Upon hearing that, Rong Jian helped Feng Rubing to search for Feng Qiqi while sending multiple messages to Feng Qiqi’s on WhatsApp.
Both Rong Jian and Feng Rubing were living at The Phoenix Gardens, which was less than three hundred meters away from the construction site of the Qing Tian Shopping Mall.
Around eleven at night, Rong Jian braced the snow and scoured the Internet cafes before finally receiving a reply from Feng Qiqi on WhatsApp, updating him that she was at a classmate’s place. He immediately called Feng Rubing, but she did not answer. Without thinking too much, he rushed to bring Feng Qiqi home from her classmate’s house.
During that time, he made a few calls to Feng Rubing, which went unanswered. Later, he was notified that the caller’s phone had been turned off. Back at home, it was already twelve thirty past midnight, but Feng Rubing was not home yet. Fearing for her safety, he made sure that Feng Qiqi was settled down before going out again in search of her. He did not expect to bump into Feng Rubing, who was sneezing when she came out from the elevator. She was relieved to learn that her sister was safely home. Before entering her place, she thanked him and shut the door in his face.
“I didn’t notice that I had lost my phone somewhere during the search.” Before going in, she explained the reason behind her unreachable phone number.
In these two days, the massive snowstorm had rendered all surveillance cameras faulty. In other words, only Feng Rubing herself knew her whereabouts between nine o’ clock last night and one o’ clock in the midnight. Apparently, she had the advantage of time.
Being the forensic doctor in charge of the two murder cases earlier, her knowledge of the method of murder from before made her the perfect criminal for a homicide or a copycat murder.
Rong Jian was shocked to find himself thinking about the possibility. The only thing missing was a motive behind the murder.
A motive…
He was reminded of the panty with Ali the Fox printed on its right and Feng Rubing’s odd behavior at the crime scene today. This was the first time she had fainted at a crime scene.
Could it be that…
The air around him suddenly froze and made him feel a chill deep down. No! That’s impossible! Feng Rubing is definitely not the murderer!
There must be some misunderstanding or conspiracy! He was determined to find out the truth.
With that thought in his head, he quickened his steps toward the city bureau.
In the forensic doctor’s office, Mu Yu, Liu Xiaofan and other colleagues had briefed Gu Jihui on the murder case. They were in the middle of a stimulating discussion on the case when the door was suddenly pushed open from the outside, which gave everyone a shock. When they saw Rong Jian coming in, they beamed at him. Gu Jihui then stood up and gestured for him to join them while asking him questions on the case.
“How’s Madam Feng doing?” whispered Mu Yu as Rong Jian walked past her. Panting, he was stunned by the question and coldly replied, “She’s fine. She’s home now.”
“Oh, that’s good news.” She sat down in relief and stared at him as he received a file from Liu Xiaofan.
“Chief Rong, all the confirmed information is here.”
“The test results of the severed finger, the chopped-up palm and the hair would only be ready by noon tomorrow,” Mu Yu added.
“Okay. Is the severed finger connected in any way to the destroyed organs from previous cases?” Rong Jian asked them while skimming through the information.
Mu Yu cautiously answered, “The organs involved in the two cases before were boneless and diced. The severed finger was chopped down into stubs. I don’t know if that’s considered a connection.”
“Of course it is!” Wu Xing interjected. “The finger was cut into stubs, which is equivalent to diced flesh.”
Mu Yu did not express her opinion on that as she continued, “If we could confirm that the severed finger and the chopped-up palm belong to the victim, this case would be more complicated than the two cases before. Or maybe the murderer harbored a deeper hate for this particular victim. If not, the murderer would not have cut the fingers and chopped up the palm.”
“Those are just the minor details. I think the real connection is here.” Liu Xiaofan rapped his knuckls on the laptop screen that was displaying a photo from the crime scene to get everyone’s attention. “Three victims were all drugged and wrapped up in a bag. Next, one of their organs was taken while they were still alive, causing them to die of hemorrhage.”
Rong Jian thought that Liu Xiaofan’s explanation made sense, so he nodded and lowered his head to pore over the file in his hands. All of a sudden, his expression changed and he hurriedly pointed at a part in the document, asking Liu Xiaofan, “Who provided this information?”