Animal Detective

The suspect was brought in a little after nine p.m.

Zhang Hancheng’s interrogation lasted until eleven p.m.

Then, the suspect was handed over to Qian Zidan.

Zhang Hancheng wasn’t particularly concerned with the espionage aspect of the case.

It was almost three in the morning, but no one had rested yet.

In the conference room.

Zhang Hancheng pulled a blackboard over to reconstruct the timeline.

8:00 p.m.: Doniya leaves.

8:26 p.m.: Wang Liang arrives.

They slept together. According to Wang Liang, he left for the first time a little after 10:00 p.m.

Then, at 10:14 p.m., presumably after Wang Liang had left, Li Siyu sent a flirty text to Zhang Zhanhui, inviting him to come keep her company.

He Jinxiang stood up and interjected, "If I may offer a theory, Li Siyu had probably just finished arguing with Wang Liang."

"She was probably smart enough to know Wang Liang would never divorce his wife, so I’m wondering if she was switching targets."

"Think about it, Zhang Zhanhui himself said that Li Siyu always maintained a flirty relationship with him and that they almost slept together several times. It’s like she was treating him as a..."

A young officer called out, "Backup plan."

He Jinxiang nodded eagerly. "Exactly! That’s the word. When Li Siyu saw there was no hope with Wang Liang, she immediately moved on to her backup, texting Zhang Zhanhui to give him a taste of what he could have."

"But who would’ve thought Wang Liang would come back? They argued again, and he ended up strangling her to death."

Zhang Hancheng nodded thoughtfully.

This was just speculation. With Li Siyu dead, there was no way of knowing the truth.

Still, based on some of the details, the theory was plausible.

They had also confirmed some points with Wang Liang.

When he returned the first time, Li Siyu didn’t open the door right away.

And after she did, she immediately sat on the sofa. During her conversation with Wang Liang, she spoke loudly, repeatedly stressing that he was the one who had an affair behind his wife’s back and seduced her first.

This matched what was on Li Siyu’s recording.

Wang Liang hadn’t been lying; a recording really did exist.

A phone was missing from the crime scene—the one with the unregistered SIM card that was used to text Zhang Zhanhui.

Wang Liang had searched for this phone but couldn’t find it.

In reality, Li Siyu herself had hidden it in the crevice of a sofa cushion and had enabled the recording function.

Perhaps after their first argument, Li Siyu had worried Wang Liang would deny everything later, so she’d intentionally prepared this as an insurance policy.

This meant that her second argument with Wang Liang, including the entire process of her being murdered, had been completely recorded.

And because she was strangled on the sofa, her body fell right there. Panicked, Wang Liang didn’t search the sofa, which is why he never found the phone.

No sooner had Wang Liang left than Zhang Zhanhui arrived.

This meant that the recording also captured Zhang Zhanhui in the act.

Zhang Zhanhui provided two audio recordings.

This was his explanation.

He claimed he hadn’t found the phone at first. It was only after Mao Ruiqiang arrived and was examining the body that he discovered the phone in the crevice and realized it was still recording.

This meant that Mao Ruiqiang’s arrival had also been recorded.

Therefore, Mao Ruiqiang edited the recording.

By checking the audio file’s metadata, they could confirm the recording’s start time, end time, and modification time.

Mao Ruiqiang had cut out the section where he showed up.

He also deliberately split it into two separate recordings.

One contained only the argument between Wang Liang and Li Siyu.

The other one included the part where Zhang Zhanhui had his way with the body.

His thinking was that he obviously had to edit himself out.

However, he knew Zhang Zhanhui might not be able to evade the police, since he had driven his C260 to the scene.

He told Zhang Zhanhui that if the police discovered he’d been to the scene but couldn’t prove he’d touched the body, he was to produce the first recording. It would prove he wasn’t the murderer and had just happened to be there by chance.

He could claim he was too scared to call the police.

He could pin the arson and the theft of the DVR on Wang Liang or someone else.

If, however, they found his DNA on the body—since Mao Ruiqiang couldn’t guarantee a perfect cleanup of all the evidence—

then in that case, he was to hand over the second recording, which would prove he only defiled the corpse.

The crime of desecrating a corpse carried a sentence of less than three years.

Then he could confess to the arson and other charges. As long as he wasn’t the murderer, he still had a chance.

Mao Ruiqiang reasoned that as long as Zhang Zhanhui didn’t rat him out, he could find a way to get him out later.

This recording did indeed prove that Wang Liang had strangled Li Siyu and fled the scene in a panic.

Zhang Hancheng continued laying out the timeline on the board.

10:43 p.m.: Cell tower data confirmed Zhang Zhanhui’s arrival at Orange Apartment.

Around the same time, at 10:47 p.m., Wang Liang drove out of the parking garage.

Mao Ruiqiang stole the DVR, and the files on it had been deleted.

Judging from Zhang Zhanhui’s confession, he went upstairs around 10:50 p.m., just missing Wang Liang.

He then discovered the body and, giving in to a depraved impulse, defiled it.

He was finished a little after 11:00 p.m.

He then attempted to clean the body and went downstairs to buy disinfectant.

Zhang Zhanhui confessed that he wore a baseball cap and kept his head down when he entered the store.

As for the surveillance footage at Meiyijia, Zhang Zhanhui said that Mao Ruiqiang hadn’t touched it.

As a spy, Mao Ruiqiang surely had a way to handle the footage.

But he was afraid that tampering with it at that point would attract police attention.

His reasoning was that as long as the investigation didn’t lead to Zhang Zhanhui, no one would notice him.

After seven days, the footage would likely be overwritten anyway, so tampering with it would be worse than doing nothing.

The Meiyijia convenience store did, in fact, overwrite its surveillance footage every seven days.

The crime occurred on the night of the 17th. Tonight was the 23rd. In one more day, the footage would have been overwritten.

They had already sent someone to retrieve the footage, and sure enough, they found Zhang Zhanhui on it, wearing a baseball cap, his face hidden from the camera the entire time.

Based on his build and clothing, it had to be him.

Just as he’d said, he was seen lingering in the store’s cleaning supplies aisle before furtively leaving.

The timestamp for his exit was 11:17 p.m.

According to Zhang Zhanhui, after leaving the store, he returned upstairs. At his wit’s end, he contacted Mao Ruiqiang around 11:30 p.m.

He didn’t make a phone call but instead used an encrypted chat app that Mao Ruiqiang had given him.

This would explain why his phone number showed only data usage and no outgoing calls after he arrived at Orange Apartment.

After they communicated, Mao Ruiqiang told him to turn off his phone and wait.

That’s why at 11:37 p.m., the phone belonging to Zhang Zhanhui was turned off.

Later, at 12:10 a.m., Mao Ruiqiang arrived disguised in a food delivery uniform.

Zhang Zhanhui didn’t know how he got there.

In any case, Mao Ruiqiang asked about the situation at the scene, then told him to leave and entrust the rest to him.

At 12:22 a.m., he drove away and went straight home.

There was another crucial issue here.

The parking garage kept entry and exit logs. The property management at Orange Apartment was notoriously money-grubbing, offering only fifteen minutes of free parking in the underground garage.

Therefore, Zhang Zhanhui, who had stayed for nearly two hours, had to pay a parking fee upon exiting.

Qian Zidan’s theory had been wrong; Mao Ruiqiang hadn’t used a hacker to break into the parking system provider’s servers and erase Zhang Zhanhui’s entry and exit records.

The entry and exit record was still there.

At 10:46 p.m., the C260 entered through the south entrance of the garage.

At 12:22 a.m., it left through the same exit after paying by scanning a QR code.

This car was also spotted on surveillance cameras on the surrounding roads.

Inside the car, the sun visor was down, and the driver wore a mask and a baseball cap—all part of Zhang Zhanhui’s deliberate disguise.

But the road surveillance confirmed that he did leave at that time.

Zhang Hancheng had discussed this point with Qian Zidan.

They both believed that Mao Ruiqiang and the spy organization behind him certainly had the capability, but there was a crucial point that Qian Zidan had initially overlooked.

Namely, the parking fee.

Entry and exit records, stored on the provider’s servers, could be altered or deleted.

But financial transactions were another matter. Those went through banks, and no one could erase them.

Perhaps Mao Ruiqiang, knowing this full well, chose not to do so.

Instead, Mao Ruiqiang had given Zhang Zhanhui a phone to pay the five-yuan parking fee.

They had already checked the payment record, and it matched the registered owner of the C260.

A woman named Yang Ziqi.

This woman had been found and brought in. She confessed to being Mao Ruiqiang’s lover.

So, this meant that during the initial investigation, whether checking cars in the garage or screening surveillance from the surrounding roads, they had already flagged this C260.

Liu Baoqing’s team had even contacted the owner, called her, and asked about the situation.

At the time, it was Yang Ziqi who answered the phone.

On Mao Ruiqiang’s instruction, she claimed the car was hers and that she had been shopping at Orange Sky Street at that time.

Since she had no connection to Li Siyu, her garage entry and exit times didn’t line up with the time of the fire, and the external road surveillance corroborated her alibi, she was ruled out as a suspect without arousing any suspicion from the task force.

But now, with Zhang Zhanhui’s confession, everything fell into place.

It just went to show: when you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack; but once you do, it’s like a guided missile, hitting the target every time.

𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Zhang Hancheng continued writing on the board.

12:22 a.m.: Zhang Zhanhui leaves. Mao Ruiqiang remains at the scene to handle the body.

1:37 a.m.: Sets the fire and steals the DVR during the ensuing chaos.

The timeline of the entire case was now perfectly clear.

After he finished writing, Zhang Hancheng stepped back to look at the completed timeline and all the related evidence.

Liu Baoqing stepped forward. "Zhang Zhi, I guess that clears things up."

Wang Liang was the murderer.

He strangled Li Siyu. The recording was proof enough to convict him.

Zhang Zhanhui, by a bizarre twist of fate, had arrived and committed the crime of desecrating a corpse.

And, of course, espionage.

But that was a matter for National Security.

As for everything that happened after, that was all on Mao Ruiqiang.

The related evidence, such as the surveillance footage and phone records, was also quite clear.

They even had the motives figured out.

It was safe to say that, as far as Li Siyu’s murder was concerned, the case was solved.

Zhang Hancheng folded his arms, thinking quietly for a moment before saying, "Don’t you all feel this case came together a little too smoothly?"

For the first five days, they had been stuck, so much so that it was about to become a cold case.

Then today, in a single day, from the moment Mao Ruiqiang was caught, they’d pushed through and managed to unravel the entire case.

The murderer was identified, and they even had the evidence to back it up.

The whole thing had happened astonishingly fast.

To Zhang Hancheng, it felt unnaturally smooth.

Besides, there were still some loose ends that hadn’t been tied up.

For example, Celestial Skill had tracked him to the flower bed and was absolutely certain that Mao Ruiqiang had gotten into a car and left.

But there was no record of Mao Ruiqiang entering or exiting the parking garage.

Of course, he might have used a fake identity, so those forty-seven cars would require further investigation.

He Jinxiang said, "Old Zhang, the key was Wang Liang. He couldn’t hold out and confessed. That’s what gave us the huge breakthrough."

In He Jinxiang’s view, Wang Liang was the key that fit the lock and opened the door.

Plus, they had already done so much groundwork. It was a case of quantitative accumulation leading to a qualitative leap. That’s why the progress was so fast.

Zhang Hancheng pursed his lips. He still had his doubts, but for now, the case did indeed seem to be solved.

"Alright, let’s all get some rest. I’m going to take this chance to check on Shen Xin and the others. I haven’t had a chance all day."

He Jinxiang quickly grabbed Zhang Hancheng’s arm. "Old Zhang, have you lost your mind? Take a look at the time!"

Zhang Hancheng paused, glanced at the wall clock, and then it hit him. Shaking his head, he laughed at himself, saying that after pulling all-nighters for six days straight, his brain was fried.

Qian Zidan’s interrogation wasn’t over yet.

Zhang Hancheng didn’t concern himself with it and decided to get some rest himself.

Early the next morning, after reporting the situation to Zhao Hongjie, he rushed to the hospital.

Shen Xin was young, after all. A night’s rest had done him a world of good, and he looked much more energetic.

When Zhang Hancheng arrived, Shen Xin was dotingly feeding small wontons to Ding Yuwei.

To look at them, you’d think Ding Yuwei was the one who was seriously injured.

"The case is solved?"

Shen Xin was stunned to hear the case had been cracked.

Seriously? That fast?

’I was planning on checking out of the hospital today if everything looked okay,’ Shen Xin thought.

’It’s just a concussion. Minor injuries don’t keep you from the front lines. With my colleagues all out there fighting, how could I just stay back here and recover?’

’And now my skills are no longer needed?’