My Lovely Wife is a Forensic Doctor - Chapter 301

Chapter 301 The Suspicions Toward the Hair-Washer Girl

“Yes?” Rong Jian immediately turned around.

“Before we report to Director Gu, shouldn’t we meet up first? Lifeng and Zihao are already waiting for you in your office.”

“Okay, then we should…” When he suddenly saw Feng Rubing staring at him, Rong Jian immediately changed his words. “Get them to come here so that we can regroup.”

Liu Xiaofan’s eyes wandered for a little, but then it clicked for him. By the time he nodded, his legs had already carried him out of the forensics lab.

Mu Yu, who initially wanted to follow Rong Jian to his office so that she could listen in as well, let out a sigh right then. Just as she was about to sit down, Weng Yun came in.

“Yu, the boss is here to pick you up from work.”

“It’s the end of the work day already?” Mu Yu glanced at her watch and immediately said, “Tell him to go home first. I’ll head back a little later.”

She didn’t want to miss the chance to gain further details about this case.

“That’s, uh…” Weng Yun was a little troubled by this.

“It’ll be fine. Just tell him I was the one who said that.” Mu Yu waved a hand nonchalantly.

“Work is important, yes, but people have a limit too. How are you going to be able to work properly if you don’t get some food in you?”

“Huan? Why are you here?” Mu Yu immediately whirled around when she heard Qin Jinhuan’s voice.

“Would you have left work if I didn’t come?”

“You already know that I won’t just get up and leave, so why come here in the first place?” Mu Yu babbled on.

“I came precisely because I knew you’d be like this.”

“In that case, why did you still come anyway?”

“I—”

“Hey! Can you guys stop going round in circles?” Rong Jian butted in rather unkindly. “You two sound like you’re in a soap opera.”

“Is there a problem with that?” Qin Jinhuan shot him a cold look. “You can always leave if you don’t like hearing this.”

“Me? Leave?” Rong Jian couldn’t stop himself from barking out a laugh. “This is where I work. If someone has to leave, it should be you, no?”

“This is the forensics lab, not your office,” said Qin Jinhuan as he corrected the former. “My wife is a forensic scientist. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to spend time with my wife as she works. What’s your reason for staying here?”

“I…” Rong Jian was at a loss for words that moment. After glancing at Feng Rubing, he forced himself to speak in a flat tone. “Isn’t it just a matter of time until it’s perfectly reasonable for me to stay here as well?”

Having picked up on Rong Jian and Feng Rubing’s awkwardness, Mu Yu gently tugged Qin Jinhuan’s arm, signaling him to stop running his mouth because of his initial victory.

However, the latter scoffed in disapproval.

Mu Yu then pulled a stool over and gestured for him to sit down before getting Qin Jinhuan a glass of water in order to ease the awkwardness in the air. Even though she didn’t have much to talk about, she still asked him about his lunch.

Meanwhile, neither Feng Rubing nor Rong Jian made a sound after that as they both pored over their own notebooks.

Shortly after that, Liu Xiaofan brought Fan Lifeng and Yan Zihao to the forensics lab. They were clearly taken aback to see Qin Jinhuan there, but they soon disregarded the oddness behind his appearance. After they nodded and greeted him, they either stood to the side or looked for a seat for themselves.

Rong Jian let Feng Rubing to explain her understanding of the case first before he began to recount the situation as told by Qian Xiaoyu and Jiao. He then looked at Liu Xiaofan, who had been investigating Xinyue Estates.

The latter began to speak after he opened his notebook and cleared his throat.

“The first to 16th blocks of Xinyue Estates are the first generation of properties developed on that land. These are all luxury apartments, with each one being about 30 to 50 square meters in area. Also, they handed over these apartments a month ago. Xinyue Estates is meant to be a neighborhood that makes it easier for kids to get admitted to the nearby schools. Since the handover was in the middle of March when school had already begun, most parents thought that transferring their children would end up hindering their studies. As such, most of the property owners that Xinyue Estates had been targeting for the easier school admission chose not to move in at this time. They decided to move in around mid or late August while they filed for school transfer paperwork. Between the 7th to the 9th floors, Qian Dacheng was the only one living there at Unit 1, Block 16. That’s why we haven’t been able to find any tenants who can provide even a morsel of a lead.”

“Were there no cameras by the gate of the residential area and the corridors?” Mu Yu cut in, doubtful.

“There are cameras by the entrance to the residential area, but it had been raining the entirety of last night. All the people who passed through the gate had umbrellas, so we haven’t been able to see their faces clearly. To top it off, they still haven’t made the entry permits mandatory yet, so the guards can’t provide us with any useful clues. They do have cameras in the corridors, but the cameras at the entrance of Unit 1, Block 16 have been broken since the day before yesterday—management only realized that they were broken because of our investigation today.” Liu Xiaofan shrugged as he looked at Rong Jian. “It’s no use trying to get them to take responsibility now.”

Qin Jinhuan did not find his joke funny. He asked seriously, “Did someone sabotage the cameras?”

“We’re not sure as of now. From the looks of things, it looked like it was because of all the strong winds.”

“When exactly did it break the day before yesterday?” Mu Yu continued to ask. She felt that there might be something useful in that information.

Liu Xiaofan gave it some thought before answering. “At night.”

“The night before yesterday…” Mu Yu twisted her head around to look at Qin Jinhuan. “It didn’t rain the night before yesterday, did it?”

“I’m not sure about that.”

“It didn’t rain,” Bian Zijun piped up from where he stood, close to the door. “I slept at 3.00AM the night before yesterday because I was prepping all the stuff for our camping trip yesterday. I can confirm that it wasn’t raining then.”

Mu Yu nodded. “I think that the culprit’s definitely the one who tampered with the cameras. If he isn’t a resident in this residential area, he definitely would have been caught on camera when he walked in through the main entrance since it didn’t rain that night. We just need to—”

“If I were him, I definitely would have climbed over the fence to get in.”

Mu Yu wasn’t angry with Liu Xiaofan for interrupting her, but she also felt somewhat defeated. If the murderer this time was the same one as the one from the previous three cases, she knew very well just how good the murderer was at thwarting their attempts to trace his steps.

Right then, Yan Zihao finally spoke after remaining silent all this while. “Don’t we currently have a suspect? Before we strike that suspect from our list, do we need to make such pointless conjectures?”

“What pointless conjectures?” Gu Jihui’s voice rang out from the door. Rong Jian and the others immediately got up to salute him.

Liu Xiaofan, who was closer to the door than the others, smiled at him instead. “What brings you here, Director Gu?”

“I waited in my office for ages, but I didn’t see hide nor hair of you all. I thought that you must be hiding somewhere and discussing amongst yourselves, so I came looking for everyone instead.” Gu Jihui appeared to be chastising them, but his tone didn’t sound like he was scolding the bunch. After he greeted Qin Jinhuan, he waved at them, signaling for them to continue.

Since Gu Jihui did not know about their earlier discussion because of his recent arrival, Rong Jian picked out the important parts and gave him a brief explanation about them. He then looked at Yan Zihao, who had been investigating Jiao, and asked him about his investigation.

“Jiao was born Chen Xiaohua, a resident of the neighboring Tao County. She was born into a poor family, and she has two younger sisters and a younger brother at home. Her parents forced her to drop out before she even finished elementary school so that she could stay at home and look after her younger siblings. At the age of 16, her greedy parents made the decision to marry her off to an old single man in his forties living in the neighboring village. A year later, she bore a son for him. The old man died of an illness when the boy was only five, and the little kid also drowned the following year. The old man’s cousins and friends thought her a harbinger of misfortune, so they forced her back to her parents’ home. Her parents couldn’t be more overjoyed, and they immediately found her a new husband, marrying her off for a dowry of 50,000 to a widower with a lame leg who lived in the same village as they did. Her neighbor pitied Jiao and secretly told her that the widower was a man who had a tendency to be suspicious of others. The widower previously thought that his ex-wife was involved with another man, so he beat her within an inch of her life. In the end, his ex-wife couldn’t take his violence toward her anymore and committed suicide by drinking pesticide. The neighbor warned Jiao not to marry the man no matter what. The terrified woman ran away from home a day before the wedding and made her way over to An City. Due to her lack of education and professional skills, she ended up working as a hair-washer girl at a salon to make ends meet.”

At that, an ambiguous smile crept onto Yan Zihao’s face. “When I say hair-washer girl, I mean women who sell—well, you know. Jiao is the name she gave herself after she started working at the salon. She knew that she couldn’t possibly return to Tao County and that she had to rely on herself for everything, so she was very dedicated to her work. In order to make her customers open their wallets even more for her, she was always very kind and caring to them, always presenting herself as someone who was thoughtful and considerate. This was probably why Qian Dacheng thought of marrying her.”

“Marrying a hair-washer girl?” Gu Jihui was astonished.

Fan Lifeng explained further, “Director Gu, don’t overestimate Qian Dacheng. He was just a lazy thug who loafed around every day and was as poor as a beggar. He even had a lame leg. Who would want to marry him? If he hadn’t tricked Jiao and told her that the Xinyue apartment was his and that he would give her the apartment after she gave him a child, Jiao wouldn’t have agreed to marry him at all.”

“That’s right.” Yan Zihao nodded before continuing to speak. “I found Jiao’s coworker, Lili, and asked her about Jiao. Lili said that Jiao was very emotional when she returned to the salon earlier that night, and she kept ripping into Qian Dacheng, saying that he was worthless because he had tricked her with a fake diamond ring.”

At the thought of her prior suspicions toward Jiao, Mu Yu then asked, “But that shouldn’t be enough for Jiao to kill him, right?”

“According to Lili, Jiao did mention castrating him when she was cursing him out. She might have been caught in a fit of rage and actually murdered Qian Dacheng viciously. Didn’t Doctor Feng say that the weapon used in this case is different from the others? Because of how much of a stir those three cases made, many people know that the first three victims had their limbs restrained with packing rope and died from excessive bleeding after one of their body parts was cut off.”

“That’s not entirely impossible. After all, the only thumbprints we found at the scene other than the victim’s was Jiao’s,” Liu Xiaofan said as he looked at Mu Yu. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the cameras were broken too.”

Mu Yu was not quite willing to accept that, though. “If Jiao really did kill Qian Dacheng, would she have said that she wanted to castrate him in front of Lili when she got back to the salon? Wouldn’t she be announcing that she’s the killer? She may not be the smartest person out there, but she’s not that stupid, is she?”

Liu Xiaofan was rendered momentarily speechless by that question. Slowly, he regained his wits before arguing against the point. “Maybe it was a slip of tongue because of how angry she was, don’t you think so?”

Rong Jian finally broke his silence. “If she was actually the killer, then she would have long since known that Qian Dacheng was dead. She wouldn’t have pretended to pass out when she found his corpse.”

“Perhaps this is all an act.”

“I wasn’t there when she fainted, so I don’t know if she was pretending. But when I went to the hospital this afternoon to question her, the fear she showed didn’t seem to be fake.” Having said that, Rong Jian looked at Qin Jinhuan. “What do you think?”

Qin Jinhuan and Bian Zijun had accompanied him to the hospital that afternoon.

Qin Jinhuan didn’t speak, but Bian Zijun spoke up instead. “If she really was putting on an act, then it’s just phenomenally realistic. She can definitely bag a best actress award.”

Yan Zihao, who supported Liu Xiaofan’s views, argued back. “Don’t forget about her line of work. Her job requires good acting. She might be—”

“All right, stop fighting.” Gu Jihui waved a hand, signaling for everyone to quiet down. “Once she is a bit more emotionally stable, you can question her again and see if you can find a new breakthrough. Meanwhile, keep surveying the crime scene and its surrounding areas for any leads you might have overlooked.” Having said all that, he looked at his watch and asked everyone, “You haven’t had dinner yet, right? Go get some food from the cafeteria and continue working once you’ve eaten.”

Suddenly, he remembered that Qin Jinhuan and Mu Yu were still there. He immediately smiled and looked at Mu Yu. “Doctor Mu, there isn’t much left to do in the forensics lab. Doctor Feng should be able to handle it herself. You and Young Master Qin can go back.”

Mu Yu refused. “No! Madam Feng’s leg hasn’t healed yet. Let her go back and rest. I’ll handle things here.”

Seeing how Qin Jinhuan remained quiet, a troubled look came over Gu Jihui’s face. He didn’t dare to agree with Mu Yu’s insistence, so he shot a look at Rong Jian, begging for his help.

Rong Jian got up. “How about this then—”

Before he could finish, his phone rang. When he saw that it was a call from Wu Xing, he immediately answered it.

“Chief, Jiao wants to see you!”