Jian Jing calmly flipped through the previous pages and asked Xiao Nuan, "Did you scream at that time?"
Xiao Nuan gripped her paper cup tightly, speaking incoherently, "I can't remember very clearly, it seems like I did, it scared me to death, it was so frightening."
She was too frightened to provide any clear details no matter how much probing there was.
What supported this point was the poisonous person. People who raise venomous animals probably have stronger psychological endurance, so he recounted the whole process relatively calmly.
"I was sleeping upstairs around 1 o'clock, just woke up and was about to go to the kitchen to find something to eat. As soon as I opened the fridge, I heard Xiao Nuan scream 'Lao Xi' outside, her voice was shaking badly, so I guessed that the courage had slipped off its leash and gone upstairs to find Lao Xi.
"He had already woken up, so the two of us hurried downstairs, but the courage had already slipped out from the front door. We followed it out and then ran into Xiao Xuan."
Officer Liu asked, "You didn't eat lunch with everyone else?"
The poisonous person said strangely, "Why would I eat with them at noon when we don't even have meals together? Besides, my habit is to sleep at dawn and get up at noon, what's the problem with that?"
Officer Liu: "Don't you feed your pets?"
"My little darlings can't get on the plane, so I came alone." He said.
Officer Liu was puzzled: "They all brought pets, how come you didn't?"
"Their shooting content is different from mine, so there was no point in bringing them." The poisonous person shrugged, "I just came out to travel."
"What's your relationship with Lao Mao like?"
The poisonous person sneered, "So-so, not much intersection, we don't even raise the same things."
At this point, the statements from all five people had been recorded.
The results from the quarantine station also came out—they were much more relaxed than the coroner—the urine tests showed traces of some kind of central nervous system stimulant in the courage's body.
No wonder it couldn't control its behavior and injured people when it pounced on them.
"Since it was caused by drugs, it was not an accident but murder." Officer Liu said solemnly, "There must be a thorough investigation."
Jian Jing nodded and paced into the kitchen to check things out.
The few tenants were all casual people, plastic bags and boxes were thrown around, the labels were not torn off, and basically everything was bought from nearby supermarkets.
She asked Sister Xuan, "Who bought this stuff? Was it all put here?"
Sister Xuan answered briskly: "We went together and bought a bunch of things, snacks, drinks, etc."
"The raw food was all prepared for the pets?"
"Yeah, for those who keep cats and dogs." Sister Xuan said matter-of-factly, "Who would cook? We just ordered hot pot takeout last night."
Such is real life.
This also meant that everyone knew the food was for the cats and dogs to eat, and the drinks and snacks were also in the kitchen, so it would be very easy to sneak something in.
So far, it seemed that the problem should be with lunch. After all, apart from the owner, it was hard to find someone who could get close to the Tibetan mastiff and inject it with something.
And from the timeline, everyone had a chance to do it—for example, what if the poisonous person was not sleeping the whole time like he claimed? This time, using the precise timeline to screen suspects would not work!
Jian Jing could confirm two things now.
The dog was drugged. The cat was bitten.
The former could be done by anyone, the drugs were also relatively easy to obtain on the market, let's not go into that for now. But the latter was more bizarre.
How could the culprit make sure the cat was bitten?
Courage first injured the cat, then attacked Sister Xuan. Afterwards, provoked by her, it directly attacked her, clearly unable to distinguish specific targets.
A maddened dog was not a loved pet, even a dog trainer would probably have a hard time commanding it.
An easier way would be to just make sure the cat appeared at the predetermined location, then release the dog.
This posed a technical difficulty—how to determine when the courage would go mad?
Pharmacology is a professional field, requiring expertise to operate. Laymen can easily slip drugs, but calculating the onset time is not so easy.
Looking at the timeline, after 11 o'clock lunch: Lao Xi was taking a nap, Sister Xuan was shooting videos, Mei Tan was editing videos, Xiao Nuan was shooting videos, the poisonous person had just woken up from his noon nap.
Everyone's actions had a certain randomness, no one could guarantee that when the courage went mad, others would not suddenly appear and ruin their plan.
Jian Jing had doubts, so she talked to Lao Xi alone.
"Tell me about the courage, what kind of dog is it?" she asked.
Lao Xi smiled bitterly, "I bought it in Tibet when I went there, spent a lot of money on it. To be honest, Tibetan mastiffs are really hard to raise, it took me two years to tame it, and even after taming it, it's still not as good as raising a golden retriever."
He hissed and said, "When it jumped at you guys, I was scared witless. Damn, it was really frightening, I knew it was fierce but didn't know it was so fierce."
Jian Jing asked, "What things is the courage particularly sensitive to, or does it like to catch things?"
Lao Xi shook his head and told her very surely: "I'm very careful, every time I feed it I use a bowl, absolutely do not throw things randomly on the ground. When raising a dog, you must develop this habit, or if it pounces around randomly, it can easily pounce on people."
He was not a professional dog trainer, but he had raised several dogs before, so he had basic knowledge and his judgment was relatively reliable.
Jian Jing believed him for the time being and asked around again: "What plans do you have today?"
"Everyone's busy with their own thing during the day, we made plans to go to an escape room at night." Lao Xi said, "I don't know if others made plans on their own or not."
She asked the others the same question and got similar answers.
As influencers, their primary task was to shoot videos. They had recorded collaboration content last night, but post-production editing takes time, so basically everyone chose to shoot 10-second short videos to maintain engagement today, except for the escape room activity at night.
In other words, the afternoon today was free activity time, it was impossible to predict what others would be up to.
In addition, Jian Jing also went to take a look at Lao Mao's cats.
A bedroom on the first floor of the villa had been turned into a cat paradise, with a cardboard maze on the floor, two cat trees, and electronic toys like a butterfly.
Lao Mao's American Shorthair and British Shorthair, as well as Mei Tan's Siamese were all here.
The Siamese was napping in a hole on the cat tree, the American Shorthair was chewing on a toy, and the British Shorthair was crouching on the floor sunbathing.
Jian Jing sat down and turned on her charm.
"Kitty kitty." She called.
The three cats were mesmerized and tilted their heads over.
She ruthlessly ruffled their heads.
The cats: "Meow~"
Weak, helpless, pitiful.
She couldn't bear it and had to let them go. She looked around the room thoughtfully.
Ten minutes later, Jian Jing left and found Officer Liu.
He had just come out of Lao Mao's room with a solemn expression: "I can't find any clues related to him being at the scene."
Whoever called Lao Mao downstairs was most suspicious, but unfortunately, no abnormalities were found in notes or electronic devices.
He sighed, "This case is difficult to investigate. It seems we have to start from the drug source and slowly eliminate suspects."
According to police experience, if valuable clues could be found at the scene, the case would be solved quickly. With nothing indicative, slowly eliminating suspects would be time-consuming and laborious, and very difficult to crack.
Officer Liu couldn't help but want to ride on Jian Jing's coattails and asked quite hopefully: "Did you find anything?"
Jian Jing thought about it and said, "Can you get the suspects to reenact the situation at the time? The scene was chaotic back then, something might have been overlooked."
Officer Liu agreed.
The prelude to the reenactment started with Sister Xuan looking for the parrot.
She didn't understand and was a little embarrassed to ask, "Do I have to reenact everything exactly the same?"
"Just let me know your route is fine." Jian Jing's requirement was not high.
Sister Xuan started wandering around aimlessly on the second floor: "I was looking for darling on the second floor, didn't see it, so I went up to the third floor. It wasn't there either, so I went down to the first floor."
There were three rooms on the second floor of the villa and two on the third.
Jian Jing interjected, "Were everyone's room doors closed? Did you knock and ask?"
"All closed." Sister Xuan supplemented the details, "Darling is afraid of strangers, so I didn't ask."
"Go on."
Sister Xuan went downstairs to the first floor and ran into Mei Tan.
"He told me darling had flown next door." Sister Xuan explained, "So I went straight out the door."
Jian Jing: "Wait at the door."
Sister Xuan did as told.
Jian Jing looked at Mei Tan: "What about you?"
"I went straight upstairs." Mei Tan walked to the second floor and pushed open a room door.
Jian Jing asked, "Wait, didn't you say you heard Xiao Nuan scream? Where were you then?"
Jian Jing recalled for a moment and answered, "Probably near the door."
She asked, "Then what?"
He said, "I went into the room."
"Didn't go downstairs to take a look?"
"She just called out, I didn't hear clearly, nor did I take it to heart," Mei Tan defended himself, "Later when Poisonous Person hurried upstairs with Lao Xi, I realized something was wrong and went downstairs with them."
Jian Jing nodded and asked Xiao Nuan to reenact again.
Her route was simpler. She went downstairs to pick up a delivery order, heard the commotion, walked to the hallway, and witnessed the assault scene, screaming loudly.
"Stay here and don't move," she instructed Xiao Nuan and walked back into the room to ask Poisonous Person, "According to your statement, you were in the kitchen at the time?"
Poisonous Person nodded.
He was in the kitchen when he heard the screams, went upstairs directly to wake up Lao Xi. Lao Xi went downstairs with him and happened to catch Yong Qi attacking Sister Xuan at that moment.
The process was roughly like this.
Jian Jing said to Officer Liu, "See, the murderer is very obvious now."
Officer Liu...Officer Liu was a little confused.
He frowned and grasped the key points to sort out: "In order to commit murder, Lao Mao must be lured out. Nothing was found in his room or on his body, most likely a verbal appointment—who can this rule out?"
"Your train of thought is right. The difficulty in this case lies in how the murderer got Lao Mao killed." Jian Jing looked around at everyone, "But if you investigate according to this line of thought, you may find nothing."
Officer Liu was very surprised: "Why?"
Jian Jing said, "Vicious dogs attacking people is unpredictable. If the goal was to precisely murder Lao Mao, why use such a dangerous method?"
Officer Liu was experienced after all. With her hint, it clicked in his mind: "You mean..."
"Judging from the statements, everyone had grievances with Lao Mao. So it seems Lao Mao was indeed premeditatedly murdered, but in fact, they were competing with each other."
Nowadays, competition is very fierce, whether it's among livestreamers or influencers. People below want to move up, people above fear being squeezed out. Losing any one person benefits everyone else.
Jian Jing said, "I think the murderer did hate Lao Mao the most, so gave him a covert push. But whether Lao Mao died was not that important. As long as someone died, or even just someone's pet died, the murderer could profit from it."
"Wait, if you put it this way, the Tibetan mastiff mauling someone is a sure thing." Officer Liu struggled to keep up with the train of thought, "So the one the murderer most wanted to eliminate was actually the Tibetan mastiff and I Love Tibet?"
As he spoke, his gaze fell on Xiao Nuan.
"Why didn't the dog attack you at the time?" he questioned.
Xiao Nuan immediately burst into tears, "I, I don't know!"
"It wasn't her." Jian Jing was very certain. "Officer Liu, put yourself in the murderer's shoes and think, if you knew there was a Tibetan mastiff that would go mad, what would you do first?"
Officer Liu was only used to thinking from a policeman's perspective, and was perceptive. With some thought, it suddenly dawned on him, and his gaze fell on the most suspicious person at the scene.
