My Lovely Wife is a Forensic Doctor - Chapter 299
Chapter 299 The Fourth Murder
“A murder?!” Mu Yu was shocked as she stuttered, “Don’t tell me t-that, that it’s…”
“Yes, it is!” Rong Jian replied immediately without waiting for her to finish, knowing very well what she was about to say.
“I-In that case, is it tied to Qing Tian in any way?” Qin Chengxi asked anxiously once she came rushing over with Qin Jinhuan. Her eyes were filled with hope for an answer that would refute her statement.
Unfortunately, Rong Jian couldn’t refute her—Qing Tian was indeed involved with the case.
“The murder victim was an employee at Qing Tian Group.”
Even though he had already mentally prepared himself for it, Qin Jinhuan’s face instantly drained of color. On the other hand, Mu Yu was so disturbed that her scalp crawled.
“What was the victim’s name? Which department did he come from? Did he…” Wen Zeyu was still throwing out question after question, but Rong Jian didn’t answer him, for Feng Rubing had emerged from her tent.
“Let’s go.” Feng Rubing hastily charged down the path leading down the mountain.
“Rubing!” Rong Jian frantically stopped her. “Your foot hasn’t healed yet, so you can’t walk too fast. How about this? You can slowly walk your way down while I take a look at the scene.”
“It’s nothing. I’m okay, so let’s go,” Feng Rubing said as she continued to move forward.
“Madam Feng!” Mu Yu chased after her, having already gotten her clothes in order. “Just take your time. Chief Rong and I will head to the scene now.”
She had just finished saying that when Qin Jinhuan walked over and rejected this notion. “You’ve only just recovered, so you can’t go there in such a rush.”
“I’m already completely fine! I—oh no!” She hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings and stepped on empty air.
“Watch out!”
“Oh, God!”
While everyone else yelled in shock, the swift Qin Jinhuan had already pulled Mu Yu back and stopped her fall. As he did so, he asked her, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just…” Mu Yu let out a hiss. She couldn’t calm herself down from the throbbing pain from her ankle, so she cried out.
“It’s got to be twisted! Don’t move!” Qin Jinhuan said as he scooped her up and carried her over to the sunshade. Then, Qin Chengxi immediately brought a stool over.
After he helped Mu Yu to sit down, Qin Jinhuan took her shoe off and inspected her foot, gently squeezing it as he checked.
“Ow—it hurts! Go easy on it! It didn’t hurt when I twisted it, but it hurts like hell now that you’re squeezing it!” Mu Yu was already crying from the pain.
“Bear with me. It’ll be over soon.” As he spoke, Qin Jinhuan held her foot and pressed down hard on it several times. Once again, Mu Yu let out a shout of pain.
“Shouldn’t we get her to a hospital?” Jiang Wenwen asked in worry as she gripped Mu Yu’s shoulder.
Meanwhile, Qin Chengxi was just as anxious as she nodded and said, “That’s right, we should send her to the hospital. I heard that you can’t just move your foot if you fractured something. It’ll make the injury worse.”
“It’s not a fracture.” By then, Qin Jinhuan had already placed Mu Yu’s foot back down. “She just sprained it, and it’ll be okay after some quick rest.”
Mu Yu then realized that she didn’t feel any of the pain from earlier. Upon hearing those words, she immediately tried to get up, but Qin Jinhuan promptly pressed her back down on her seat. “You have to rest a bit before you can walk again.”
“But wouldn’t the case be—huh? Where’s Chief Rong and Madam Feng?” Mu Yu surveyed the area in surprise.
“They’ve already gone down the mountain,” Qin Chengxi answered.
“Oh gosh! Madam Feng’s foot still hasn’t healed completely. Isn’t she going to have a hard time if she’s going down with Chief Rong?”
“No, Rong Jian went down first. Qiqi is with Doctor Feng, so they shouldn’t be walking too fast.” Qin Chengxi could sense Mu Yu’s worry, so she quickly assured her by saying, “Yu, it’s okay if you don’t go since Doctor Feng is already on the way.”
“How can things be okay if I don’t go? Madam Feng will definitely be swarmed with work by herself. I have to help her out!” Mu Yu said as she hobbled her way out from under the sunshade with uneven steps.
“Hey! You…”
“I’ll go with her.” Qin Jinhuan knew he couldn’t stop Mu Yu, for he had already moved forward to help her stand. As he did so, he turned his head back to instruct Shang Qi, “Stay with Xi for a while at the camp. Take good care of her.”
“Let’s go down too.” Qin Chengxi was already in no mood to continue enjoying the trip.
“Do whatever you want.” With that, Qin Jinhuan turned his head back and helped Mu Yu to slowly descend the mountain. Bian Zijun, Weng Yun, and the others immediately followed them.
“Damn this foot. It gets less cooperative the more chaotic things are,” Mu Yu grumbled about her foot as she walked.
“We can’t rush things like this.” Qin Jinhuan had already calmed down considerably.
Mu Yu stopped her cursing. Instead, her tone took a worried turn as she asked, “Who knows which department that Qing Tian employee was under. If he’s another corporate bigwig, then people are going to make a huge stir out of it, making everyone else much more afraid.”
“People will still be afraid even if he’s not high on the totem pole.” Although Qin Jinhuan seemed composed on the surface, the tight, tense lines of his eyebrows revealed the unease he felt.
“Just what kind of grudge does this murderer have against the Qing Tian Group? Did he orchestrate all these murders that link back to Qing Tian just so he can get revenge, or is it because of mere competition between businesses? If it’s just because of competition, isn’t he just being evil?”
Qin Jinhuan did not answer her, merely moving forward quietly.
When she saw him being like this, Mu Yu felt that there was no use in making pointless guesses, so she didn’t make a sound again after that. She did her best to walk as fast as she could in hopes that she would soon catch up to Feng Rubing.
However, they did not see Feng Rubing and Feng Qiqi when they reached the foot of the mountain, but they did see two cars parked there—one of them was the car that Bian Zijun and his subordinates were in. They had left a few others behind to watch over the car when they went up the mountain yesterday. Now that they knew Rong Jian and Feng Rubing had left one after another, they also brought along another car. After Mu Yu and Qin Jinhuan got in, she proceeded to call Rong Jian. Once she found out that the case was at a residential area at Xinyue Estates, she immediately got Weng Yun to drive there.
“The murder was at Xinyue Estates?”
When she saw how deeply Qin Jinhuan frowned, Mu Yu nodded her head as she asked, “What about Xinyue Estates?”
“It’s a piece of real estate developed by the Qing Tian Group consisting of luxury apartments. They just handed it off a month ago,” Bian Zijun explained from the passenger’s seat.
“Just a month since the handover, and now there’s a murder there. If it’s also a terrible murder like the previous three cases, then I’m worried that…” Mu Yu didn’t continue any further with the sense of foreboding she felt.
“The victim was an employee at Qing Tian, and they also died in a residential area that’s also under the Qing Tian Group’s name. Obviously, this is meant to target the company.”
The ‘also’ in Bian Zijun’s words gave Mu Yu a headache. When Li Jianyun died at a construction site that was also under the Qing Tian Group’s name and caused the construction schedule to be further delayed, the clients had united to make the Qing Tian Group take responsibility, causing the company massive losses. Now that a murder had occured at the residential area a month after the properties had been handed off, there was no telling what the property owners were thinking.
It still wouldn’t be enough to make them ask for a full refund, right? There are tens of thousands of people who own units there. If they all kick up a fuss, what should we do?
Still, Mu Yu soon realized that she was worrying too much. Countless residential areas had murder cases, but she had never heard of any home owners living there who chose to get a full refund on their property. After all, the current real estate market was on fire, and many apartments had been sold out the moment they were put up for sale.
“No one knows how the culprit killed this victim too, right?” Weng Yun asked as he drove.
“If it’s the same killer as before, then he would have bound the victim’s limbs and covered his mouth before chopping up one of the victim’s body parts while he was still alive. The person would eventually die from the excessive blood loss,” Bian Zijun replied.
These seemingly nonchalant words seemed extraordinarily terrifying to Mu Yu. She reflexively whipped her head around to look at Qin Jinhuan, only to see him with his lips pressed tightly together, looking as though he was deep in thought. She knew that he was worried about the murder case, so she immediately held his hand. He quickly turned his head and when his eyes met her own concerned ones, his lips curved up a little to show that he was all right.
Nothing had been confirmed yet as of now, so Mu Yu didn’t say anything else. She just held his hand tightly.
Weng Yun did not know that his own words had stressed his superior out while he continued to drive. He then asked once again, “If it’s actually that killer from before, what part of the victim’s body do you think he chopped up this time?”
“Who knows. It might be the victim’s foot, or maybe he cut their ear off. Perhaps he even gouged their eyeballs out.”
“Gouging out the eyeballs isn’t very likely, I think. That’s because you can’t chop eyeballs up into bits. That will set this case apart from the other previous cases. I think that the murderer has OCD. If the victim was a man, there’s a chance that the killer might have pulled his intestines out before slicing them up.”
However, Bian Zijun thought that was rather illogical. “Intestines are a really long organ. If the killer were to actually chop them up into tiny bits, how long would it take? The killer would have definitely tried to take as little time as possible, or it would have been riskier.”
“Now that you mention it, I think that it actually is impossible. Besides, the intestines are filled with poop. He’d get his hands dirty if he sliced into them. Then, that would be…”
“Are you guys done yet?” Qin Jinhuan barked out in irritation. It was then did Weng Yun realize that he had run his mouth. Instantly, he shivered and went completely silent.
Mu Yu had been thoroughly engrossed in their theories, so when Qin Jinhuan cut them off, she immediately stiffened, but then she lowered her head to think about it carefully. She thought that Bian Zijun and Weng Yun’s discussion wasn’t without basis.
In truth, she was also curious about the body part that the killer had chopped up this time. According to the chopped body parts of the previous three victims, the body part that the killer sliced off this time had to be something that was linked to a moral failing of the victim. Of course, that was assuming that it was the same killer as the other three cases and that he used the same methodology as he did before.
No one spoke again after that throughout the journey.
Mount Anyue was to the west of An City, over 100 kilometers away from it. Meanwhile, Xinyue Estates was located to the west side of An City itself. Weng Yun drove rather quickly, for they had reached the very entrance of Xinyue Estates in less than an hour.
The gate to the place was majestic. There was a small plaza right after the entrance, and there was a garden right in front of that plaza. A large rock sat in the middle of the garden with the words ‘Qing Tian: Xinyue Estates’ carved right into it. There were guard houses at both the entrance and exit, and each guard house had a security guard standing there, ramrod straight. Mu Yu’s car had only just arrived at the entrance when the security gate lifted for them. She was taken aback by this.
“Can non-residential cars just come and go freely from this area?”
“No.” Bian Zijun quickly explained, “It’s because I called up the manager of the residential area earlier. If you don’t have a permit from them, the car wouldn’t have been able to make it past the gate.”
“I see. Does it mean that you need a permit to enter and leave?”
“Since the handover is recent, many people haven’t moved in yet. They haven’t made the permits mandatory yet.”
“In other words, anyone can just come in and leave this place freely for now?”
“That’s right.”
They stopped the car behind a police car. Mu Yu didn’t bother questioning Bian Zijun further and immediately got out of the vehicle. When she did so, she saw that Block 16 had been cordoned off by the police. She immediately ran over and flashed her ID. Once she found out which floor the murder had taken place at, she immediately charged into the elevator without waiting for Qin Jinhuan and the others to catch up. Soon, the elevator reached the eighth floor.
Two policemen stood outside of room 802. They knew Mu Yu, so they immediately let her pass when they saw her approaching. She had only just entered the room when she smelled the heavy stench of blood.
It was an apartment that was a little over 40 square meters in area. It consisted of a bedroom, a kitchen, a common area, and a bathroom. The corpse, which had been lying on the bed earlier on, had already been taken away in a body bag.
Mu Yu carefully stepped into the bedroom, only to see that the bed was stained dark red with blood. There was no telling the blood apart from the dark red of the floorboards themselves, and Mu Yu was only able to tell that there was blood because of the dampness. A human outline had been drawn on the bed with white chalk. From the size of the shape, it was easy to see that the victim was tall. He was at least 180 centimeters or perhaps even taller.
Rong Jian stood by the bed as his mind wandered off. Meanwhile, Feng Rubing was currently crouched down. She wasn’t surprised to see Mu Yu enter, and she pointed at the toolbox lying by the side. “Check if there are any body parts that have been overlooked at the scene.”
“All right.” Mu Yu immediately picked up the tools and bent down to check. As she did so, she asked, “Who was the victim?”
“He was a worker for Qing Tian, and he worked at the quarry at Mount Anyue.”
“The quarry at Mount Anyue?” Something white immediately flashed in front of Mu Yu’s eyes.
“That’s right.”
“I see. Well, what body part was cut off this time?” She had only just asked that question when she noticed a dark red lump of flesh by one of the legs of the bed. Mu Yu immediately picked it up with her tweezers and carefully inspected it, her mind working a mile a minute to figure out which part of the body it had belonged to.
“Don’t keep staring at it.” Feng Rubing opened the evidence bag and held it out to her. “Put it in.”
“Which body part does this belong to?” Mu Yu was very curious since she found it rather foreign.
“It’s a man’s penis,” Rong Jian answered.