Today's temperature has dropped below freezing. Walking outside makes one shiver with cold.
Jian Jing bundled up in a down jacket, stomping about in snow boots, not forgetting to wear a woolen cap, crouching in the back seat while peering out the window.
Liang Yi's cheeks were frozen red, but his spirit was high: "Shall we go to that gardening shop first?"
Among the factories within range, one sold potted plants, a gardening shop where flowers, trees and plants gathered from the countryside would rest here, get potted, then shipped to shops in the city center for sale.
Since traces of rural soil were detected on the clothes, it was naturally the center point to investigate.
The factory was located remotely. Two workers were busy in the greenhouse.
Ji Feng and Liang Yi brought the photo of Zhu Director and asked around for information. Meanwhile, Jian Jing took Knight and had it sniff the clothes, wandering about.
Knight's skills were still not very polished.
After all, just half a month ago, its job was still to guard the door. Now it had to suddenly transform into a tracking dog, so it could only hastily pick up the skills.
Fortunately, because it feared (?) its master, it didn't dare to be naughty, honestly following the scent. However, it had rained recently, the scent had faded to the point it couldn't fade any further. Following it downstream, Knight was left dizzy and confused, completely blank.
Seeing it circling around lost, Jian Jing knew it was hopeless, and didn't force the poor pup. "Go back for snacks, drink some yogurt."
Knight immediately perked up.
Jian Jing looked up, glancing around, sorting out the ins and outs of the case in her heart: On the night of November 27th, Gong Lu died. To cover up his own manslaughter, Zhu Guoliang was determined to create a series of linked murders, making his wife one of the victims, to reduce suspicion on himself.
He imitated the serial killers from TV shows, targeting women with wavy long hair as his victims.
To avoid close inspection of the first case, he had to quickly kill the second victim, confusing the times of death, reversing the order.
It just so happened that on November 27th, the temperature dropped, freezing over and breaking the power lines, causing a large-scale blackout in the region.
He picked up the second victim (first corpse) outside the bar, and took away his wife's body, killing the second person somewhere.
That place had to be hidden, not easily discovered.
Rural soil, ash...why would these things remain on the clothes?
Jian Jing strolled back just in time to see a truck loading potted plants, preparing to leave. The shuddering vehicle shook loose undeaned soil now and then, dropping it all along the street.
The driver was a heavy smoker, driving with the window open, flicking ash now and then. Fine ash sprinkled down, trailing along the path.
Jian Jing: Hey!
She quickly took Knight, chasing after the truck.
The truck passed through three intersections, then took a left directly onto the highway.
Jian Jing stopped at each intersection, having Knight sniff around all directions. Since it got on the clothes, it must have been from the soles rather than the tires, so the location must be nearby.
Sure enough, at the second intersection, Knight seemed to catch the scent again, bolting into an abandoned factory next door.
It should be here.
"Stop." Jian Jing called it to halt, in case it contaminated the scene.
Knight immediately crouched down motionless.
Jian Jing stroked its head, tying the leash to a roadside railing, giving it a pack of treats. Knight grabbed the bag with both front paws, tearing a hole and happily eating the little biscuits.
She activated the scent card herself and went inside to look around.
Inside was poorly lit, quite dusty. Most of the rooms were empty. Only one office had uneven dust near the door.
Wearing gloves and twisting the door open, the furniture inside had all been moved out, the dust unevenly distributed.
There was an obvious dent on the left wall, as if the plaster had been scraped away, very noticeable.
Jian Jing crouched down for a closer look. The mark was clearly very new, made just recently.
Could it be that something had been left here before, and destroyed after the murderer discovered it?
"Jian Jing?" Liang Yi's voice called out from afar, "Are you there?"
"Here." She responded, "There's something here."
Liang Yi and Ji Feng hurried over. Taking one look at the scene, they said: "This must be it."
"We just asked the workers, they said some plastic sheets were stolen recently." Liang Yi couldn't hold back, immediately revealing the new information, "It was laid down here right? That's why there were no footprints?"
Jian Jing nodded, though couldn't help feeling regret: "It seems some clues were left here before, but got destroyed."
"What?!" Liang Yi exploded, tiptoeing over for a closer look, wanting nothing more than to immediately pound the murderer.
Ji Feng called them over: "I've called for people, you should come out and not contaminate the scene."
The two tiptoed out, standing by the door to discuss.
"If plastic sheets were laid down, not to mention footprints, even hair would be hard to find." Bald Liang Yi said. "This person's anti-investigation awareness isn't bad."
Optimistic Ji Feng said: "No way, fumbling around in the dark, I don't believe he could scrub it clean like a car. Just wait and see."
Soon after, the forensics team arrived fully equipped, entering the scene and beginning the search for clues.
With their complete equipment, utilizing multi-spectrum lighting, they collected half a shoeprint, probably accidentally stepping on the edge of the plastic sheet.
They also found two false eyelashes in the corner, and in an inconspicuous corner of the wall, discovered a few fingernail marks.
"This is a bit strange." The forensics officer took photos to show them, "Look at the height, only if kneeling."
A few heads clustered together. Indeed, they were a few bizarre, misshapen nail scratches.
Not only were the marks different from normal codes of numbers or letters, they were branch-like, the branches folded, with a few circles, four groups in total.
Calling it graffiti was questionable, it seemed to have an underlying order, making one suspect it was a code, yet none had seen something like this before.
Liang Yi was instantly confused: "Dancing little people? Only four in total, can't decipher at all."
Ji Feng said: "The marks are very new, doesn't seem random."
Captain Wang also took a look, sighing: "Read too many horoscopes?"
Jian Jing paused, expression subtle.
Ji Feng noticed and directly asked: "Do you recognize it?"
"Cough." She cleared her throat, "This is the Rose Code, from...uh, my books."
The others were stunned, not knowing whether to be delighted or shocked: "Really?"
Jian Jing: "..."
Turns out serious criminal investigation officers don't read her detective novels either? Were they really that bad? She thought The Rose Gold was quite popular.
She couldn't help feeling slightly awkward. "Really."
Captain Wang said: "Then how do you decipher it?"
"Very simple, there's a code table split into three sections top, middle and bottom, arranged from the center outward." Jian Jing casually demonstrated for them, "Three groups of eight letters, two leftover at beginning and end."
The resulting table was:
y
ga丨bhnt
uoic丨djpv
wqke丨flrx
z
"The tree trunks are the center lines, the folds represent order, the circles ordering of spelling. " Jian Jing easily decoded it, "The message she left was 'jiezhiyongchi'."
"Dismembered swimming pool?"
"Medium swimming pool?"
Liang Yi suddenly exclaimed: "Ring! Ring swimming pool!"
"A ring in the swimming pool..." Jian Jing understood, "That type of stand or inflatable pool he used!" Frantically recalling Zhu Director's appearance, he wore a ring on his left hand, but...very new.
Men wearing rings were usually wedding bands. It made no sense for it to be so shiny and new.
Captain Wang ordered: "Search Zhu Guoliang's home, see if there's anything related to a swimming pool."
"Yes sir."
Once mobilized, the efficiency of the state apparatus was frightening.
Two hours later, police had found an old inflatable pool in Zhu Guoliang's garage. It looked somewhat old from the exterior, but was very clean inside, still wet with water droplets.
Blowing it up with the valve, something shifted inside with the movement.
Pouring it out, it was an old wedding ring.
Wrapped around the ring were several strands of brown hair, follicles intact.
This was the death message left behind by the third victim.
Zhu Guoliang could not explain why this victim's hair was together with his ring, hidden inside an old pool.
He could only reluctantly confess, admitting to the murders of the four victims including Wan Yuan.
First, his wife Gong Lu. That day, he had a big argument with his wife. In anger, he pushed his wife and she hit her forehead on the floor, accidentally knocking herself out.
In a moment of wickedness, he simply threw her into the bathtub to "wake her up", and locked the bathroom door.
At that time, the water in the bathtub had already cooled down, and his wife was only wearing thin pajamas. She died of hypothermia while unconscious. By the time he woke up at midnight to check, she had already lost her breath.
He was afraid at first, then delighted, thinking he had gotten rid of this ill-tempered woman, and a wonderful life was right in front of him. But there was a problem standing in his way - how to deal with the police.
Then, being a frequent viewer of American TV shows, he had a flash of inspiration.
If it was just his wife who died, he would definitely be the prime suspect. But what if one more person died? If he fabricated a psychopathic killer who just "happened" to target his wife, wouldn't he be safe?
Zhu Guoliang didn't have much talent for being an official, but he did have some skills for committing crimes. In just two or three hours, he had a preliminary plan in place.
It just so happened that the temperature had dropped below freezing that day, causing a power outage. The person on duty sent him a message, which was originally informing him of things to do at work the next day, but it gave him an idea and made him pull out a map to select a suitable location for his murder.
He put on a hat and mask, parked his car far away, singled out someone resembling his wife from the bar, dragged her onto his car, and took her to an abandoned factory within the power outage area.
He also took out the inflatable pool he bought for home, poured in two buckets of water, stripped her clothes off, tied up her hands and feet and threw her in to freeze her to death alive.
The girl hadn't sobered up from the alcohol yet before she lost her life.
Zhu Guoliang first disfigured her, threw the corpse outdoors, then saw that her clothes were stylish and she had an obvious nightclubbing look. Afraid that people would guess the location, he went to a roadside shop to buy her a set of shoddy clothes to change into before abandoning the body on the street.
His wife's corpse was hidden under the snow, to be disposed of the next day after the snow melted, thrown in a demolition area without surveillance.
By reversing the order of the two cases like this, even if her identity was investigated, suspicion wouldn't fall on him.
But after two days, Zhu Guoliang started feeling uneasy again.
If the police discovered that the "psychopathic killer" stopped after his wife's death, it would undoubtedly create more trouble for him. So he decided to go all the way and find another scapegoat.
However, his wife Gong Lu was only knocked unconscious, and the bar girl was dead drunk like a pig. The third woman was a designer working overtime who was relatively sober, having stayed up only because of her client's antics.
Although Zhu Guoliang injected her with anesthetics, she woke up while shivering frozen.
Her limbs were numb and she shouted for help, but was discovered by Zhu Guoliang standing guard outside, who tightly covered her mouth.
In the struggle, she tore off the ring on Zhu Guoliang's hand and clutched it in her palm, pretending to faint.
Zhu Guoliang didn't expect her to regain consciousness, and was frightened. He was in a panic and didn't notice right away. By the time he realized the ring was lost and went looking for it, he couldn't find it no matter what.
He didn't know the girl had opened the air valve to deflate the pool, wrapped his ring with her hair and threw it into the inner layer, and left the password on the wall as a clue.
But after doing that, afraid it was too obvious, she mustered her frozen body's strength to prick her finger and randomly smeared some bloody characters on the wall as camouflage.
Sure enough, Zhu Guoliang saw the pool was leaking and water flowing everywhere. He was about to clean it up when he noticed the bloody words on the wall. No longer bothering to investigate closely, he hurriedly scraped off the plaster.
And at that moment, the soaking wet girl in the low temperature finally couldn't hold on and died.
Zhu Guoliang breathed a sigh of relief. As usual, he destroyed her face, then after waiting for the power outage notice, hastily disposed of the corpse.
At this point, he had committed a total of three cases. He felt flawless and ready to stop. But who knew, passing by 2077 Bar that day, he caught sight of Wan Yuan who looked extremely similar to his wife, scaring his soul out of his body.
Once someone commits evil, they can never restrain themselves again.
In fright, Zhu Guoliang, knowing he couldn't possibly be Gong Lu, still tricked the staggering drunk person into his car and dragged him to the secret location to kill him.
It wasn't until the person was dead that he suddenly realized something was off.
Damn it, it was actually a man!
