My Lovely Wife is a Forensic Doctor - Chapter 303
Chapter 303 The Walls Have Ears
“What?” Liu Xiaofan and Rong Jian blurted in unison.
“The trash!”
“The trash?!”
While Rong Jian was thoroughly dumbfounded, Liu Xiaofan loudly scoffed and said, “We asked if you saw anything odd, and you say it’s the trash?”
The slightly frantic Jiao answered, “Yeah! The trash’s different!”
Rong Jian realized something was odd about this and swiftly interrogated, “Are you saying that somebody came and messed with the trash at your apartment’s door?”
In response, Jiao furiously corrected him by saying, “It’s not my apartment. It’s Qian Dacheng’s apartment!”
“Okay, fine! It’s not your apartment, but Qian Dacheng’s,” said Rong Jian as he patiently amended his words. “You’re saying it’s weird that someone went to Qian Dacheng’s apartment and meddled with the garbage, right?”
“That’s right.” Jiao nodded her head and continued to explain, “We ordered some takeout for dinner, and the bag of trash contained some leftovers. I was planning to take the trash out when I went downstairs, so I just placed the trash bag down at the neighbor’s door. After our fight, I decided to walk off and cool down, but I was so pissed at the time and accidentally tripped when I was trying to put on my high heels. Naturally, I held on to the neighbor’s door to prevent myself from falling, and that was when I noticed the position of the trash bag had been altered.”
Liu Xiaofan was skeptical about this, so he asked, “Why would you even notice that it had been moved?”
“That’s because I’ve always put it at the exact spot in front of the neighbor’s door. Here, let me show you—I’d stand at the door while holding the knob as I place the bag next door.” Since she was afraid that Liu Xiaofan wouldn’t believe her, she deliberately got up from her seat and demonstrated as she elaborated, “The apartment doors of Xinyue Estates face outward. Since there aren’t any residents next door, I never worried about the bag obstructing anyone’s path, so I’d just place it at the door of the empty apartment. I realized that the trash bag had been moved when I came out. Although I found it strange, I just assumed someone had moved in. However, since I was pissed off at the time, I didn’t give it much thought and simply walked away.”
“But the bag was planted right at the door of Room 801 this morning!” On the other side, Yan Zihao sprung up as he spoke, gesticulating like Jiao did. “I opened it! I even went through its contents since I thought there would be some clues inside the bag!”
At that moment, Liu Xiaofan started to get worked up as well. “From what I remember, the management mentioned that Qian Dacheng’s the only resident living on the 7th to 9th floor of that Unit. His only neighbor is an elderly couple in their sixties. They went overseas to visit their son before the New Year, and they have not returned since.”
“If Jiao is right, did the killer shift the trash bag?” Yan Zihao agitatedly continued, “The killer probably infiltrated Room 801 last night and observed the activities in the next apartment. When Jiao left Room 801, the murderer barged in and killed Qian Dacheng, right?”
“I wouldn’t mistake it!” said Jiao confidently. She then continued, “I’m sure the killer moved the trash bag in order to hide inside Room 801!”
Suddenly, she revealed an expression so terrified yet grateful, looking as though she had just escaped a disaster. “The killer must have hidden in the room for a long time, waiting for us to fall asleep before storming in to commit murder! If I hadn’t left as the result of our argument, I might have been murdered as well! Oh, heavens! That’s so horrible! I must have offended the devil in my previous life!”
Meanwhile, Rong Jian ignored her words and hurriedly turned to Liu Xiaofan. “Bring some men over to Room 801 and see if anyone had indeed trespassed it.”
“Roger that!”
The latter immediately stood up while Yan Zihao, who had been jotting down some notes, tossed his pen to Fan Lifeng and said, “Allow me to tag along with him, Chief Rong!”
After Rong Jian nodded, the other two swiftly departed.
“Uhh… I guess there’s no need for me anymore, right?” Jiao asked warily.
“You’re no longer needed for now, but you’ll have to standby for any interrogation soon.”
“Certainly, certainly! May I take my leave right now?”
Rong Jian waved his hand, and Jiao hastily left the room like she had just received a pardon.
“Wait for a second!” Out of nowhere, Mu Yu appeared at the door and stopped her.
“W-What do you want?” Jiao immediately became anxious while she pointed at Rong Jian panickedly. “Your chief said there’s no longer a need for me!”
Meanwhile, Mu Yu simply disregarded her worries and asked, “Previously, you claimed that you realized the diamond ring was fake after receiving a text message from a regular customer, right?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?” Evidently, Jiao was as restless as ever.
“Do you have any information about the customer who sent you that text?”
Jiao’s face was full of panic as she answered, “We have our own rules in the salon. Unless the customer permits it, we will never expose any private information regarding our customers. Why? What’s wrong with him?”
Mu Yu ignored her question and quickly asked, “Well, can you find any information about him from his Wechat profile?”
“Beats me. Let me see,” said Jiao as she pulled out her phone, opened her Wechat and navigated to the man’s profile before showing it to Mu Yu. “Here on WeChat, I only pay attention to texts and WeChat Moments. Nothing more. Have a look, though.”
Mu Yu quickly grabbed the phone, only to see a Wechat profile with the sender’s username, ‘outoflux’. The person had only sent a couple of texts to Jiao; one of them was a short message that merely contained the words ‘old customer’ sent on the 23rd of March when they had just added each other. The other one was sent at 11.40PM the night before, and it was about the genuineness of the diamond ring. After accepting his friend request, Jiao sent a text which read, ‘Who this man be?’ followed by a cutesy emoticon, but there wasn’t any response from him.
Mu Yu pointed her finger at the text messages and asked, “After you asked for his identity, did he not respond or did you delete his texts?”
“He didn’t respond at all. After adding me as a friend, he’s never sent anything else apart from last night’s text. I’ve not a clue as to who he is.”
At that, Mu Yu swiped to the details and found out that they had added each other through their phone’s contact list. She then asked, “Do many people know your number?”
Jiao nodded in response. “Yeah. I give away business cards to male customers who visit my salon for the first time and ask them to take care of my business.”
Mu Yu obviously knew what she meant by that, but she didn’t ask more about it. After glancing at the profile photo of ‘outoflux’, which was a shot of scenery, she tapped on his profile to check out his personal details. Apart from the information that he was from outside An City, the profile was empty without even WeChat Moments. Hence, it was clear that the person was deliberately concealing his information. Of course, Mu Yu knew that these men frequented the salon without their wives knowing, so it was only natural for them to keep their personal details hidden. For some reason, though, she thought there must be something much deeper hidden behind the person’s profile.
At this moment, Rong Jian realized something. He tensed his brows as he gazed at the phone in Mu Yu’s hands. “The man must have visited the salon.”
“We don’t know that yet,” she disagreed before turning to Jiao. “Aside from your salon, have you ever distributed your business card elsewhere?”
“Yes, my business cards are available at the nearby hotel.” As she felt Rong Jian staring at her, Jiao suddenly realized that her occupation was a nidering deal. She hastily clarified by saying, “It’s merely for hair washes at the hotel. Nothing else!”
Despite her fishy defense, the chief didn’t pursue the matter and simply dismissed her.
“Keep your phone on at all times. We’ll look for you as the need arises.”
“Okay.” When she saw that the policemen had no intention in digging about her unusual job scope, Jiao was delighted. After retrieving her phone, she forcefully waved at them before rushing out the room.
Since the only people left in the room were Mu Yu, Qin Jinhuan, Feng Rubing, and Rong Jian himself, he then muttered, “Do you think this customer is fishy, Yu?”
The woman nodded her head as she said, “I’ve an intuition that Qian Dacheng’s death has nothing to do with Jiao, and our murderer is this guy.”
Upon hearing that, Feng Rubing continued, “The suspect must have been in Room 801 long ago, constantly eavesdropping and surveying the movements in Room 802. Since his target was Qian Dacheng and not Jiao, the text must have been meant to draw her away from Qian Dacheng to create an opportunity to kill him. It mustn’t have been a coincidence that the cameras in Qian Dacheng’s block were all down the day ‘outoflux’ added Jiao on Wechat. In other words, he must have planned out his butchery against Qian Dacheng since then. All the other particulars were mere tools to assure a flawless plan to kill him off, and yesterday night was the best shot the suspect could take at murdering Qian Dacheng.”
“Madam Feng’s inference is very reasonable,” Mu Yu agreed, though she couldn’t afford to bear any expectations. “However, if this case shares the same murderer with the previous three, with his counter-detective skills that we know very well, we can never find anything else despite knowing he had certainly been in Room 801. He would’ve definitely erased all his traces, and he had plenty of time to clean everything up.”
After a momentary pause, she then expressed, “He even knew that the ring Qian Dacheng gave Jiao was fake. Perhaps he had a three-way encounter with the couple?”
After pondering for a bit, Rong Jian responded, “It was Jiao’s first diamond ring, so she probably showed it off to others thinking it was a dear treasure, and no one doubted it to be a counterfeit. Even her buddy Lili, who had put it on a few times, never noticed anything wrong about it. Oddly enough, it was ‘outoflux’ who figured it out, so it’s pretty obvious that he must’ve interacted with Jiao and has an exceptional skill at identifying fake goods. In other words, he must possess a remarkable position to do so as an ordinary man could never distinguish the fake ring.”
Once again, Mu Yu disagreed with his statements and said, “What if he knew the ring was a counterfeit from Qian Dacheng himself? Let’s say he was the seller, or perhaps he knew Qian Dacheng personally. There’s even a possibility that Qian Dacheng told this person how he had managed to trick a woman with this fake ring.”
“These are both firm possibilities. I’ll send some men to look in these directions.” As Rong Jian spoke, he jotted something down in his notebook. “We shall run another check on the Wechat profile—perhaps we might’ve even missed some clues. Of course, it’d be best if Fan manages to find any new leads about the suspect in Room 801.”
After he finished noting everything down, he kept his notebook. “I’ll go and make some arrangements. You should head back to the lab, Rubing. It’s getting late, so you should return home with Huan and get some rest, Yu. You can return for your shift tomorrow morning.”
“Wait, Chief Rong!” As he was dashing out of the interrogation room, Mu Yu yelled out. “There’s something I’ve forgotten to ask you.”
At once, Rong Jian halted his steps and turned around. “What is it?”