Reborn in 97, I solved a cold case at the Municipal Bureau

Chapter 261 Tutor
"We are used to judging a child's worth by their grades."

"If you study well, you're a good child, and everything you do is right."

"If you don't do well in school, you're a bad kid, and nothing you do is right."

"But in reality, good or bad academic performance and high or low moral character are not equivalent."

"Perhaps there is some connection between them. For example, those who do well in their studies receive more praise and attention, which leads to a stronger sense of self and higher expectations of themselves, thus making them better. This is what the ancients meant by 'examining oneself three times a day.'"

"But this is an awareness, not an inevitability."

"My view is that learning is a skill, but morality is a quality. Knowledge can be acquired through hard work, but morality cannot be improved through hard work."

"Huang Chen is a case in point, and there's also Zhu Xuejun, the director of the Third Municipal Hospital we arrested before. He's accomplished a lot, right? He was probably a top student from childhood, a prodigy. But what happened? He's morally corrupt and utterly devoid of conscience. Not only did he have promiscuous relationships, but he also used others to commit murder and other crimes. The most terrifying thing is that he used academic fraud to protect unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies and act as their accomplice. If he had succeeded, who knows how many people he would have killed."

In fact, he had already succeeded in his previous life.

Even Zhou Yi didn't know how many people died because of Zhu Xuejun in his previous life.

Watching Zhou Yi speak eloquently, Qiao Jiali didn't interrupt him. Only after he finished speaking did she say with great appreciation, "Zhou Yi, sometimes I really don't understand you. What have you been through to make you, at the age of twenty-three, sometimes act like a middle-aged man who has experienced a lot in life? Chen Yan was also twenty-three when he first joined the Third Brigade. Back then, he was just a greenhorn, timid and hesitant in his actions, and he didn't dare to take the initiative to communicate with others. He was always following Captain Wu around like a little follower."

Everyone in the Third Brigade had seen Zhou Yi's file.

He is a local, his parents are alive and well, his family is harmonious, and his grandfather is a retired soldier. He has not experienced any major changes since childhood. His grades when he entered the provincial police high school and his performance in school were not outstanding.

Looking at his resume alone, Zhou Yi before the age of 23 had the typical resume of a grassroots police officer, which was unremarkable.

Therefore, although Wu Yongcheng initially transferred Zhou Yi to the Municipal Bureau, he always harbored some doubts about him, because Zhou Yi's actual performance did not match his resume.

Although Wu Yongcheng still didn't understand how Zhou Yi had suddenly appeared, he had accepted the fact and stopped dwelling on it.

Zhou Yi has now found a way to deal with this surprise. He replied, "I just watch a lot of TV and learned it from TV."

When the two returned to the Municipal Public Security Bureau, they found that Shi Tao and the others had not yet returned, so they interrogated Yao Fenfang and Tang Xue separately.

Yao Fenfang's face was noticeably paler than yesterday. Her first words to Zhou Yi were, "Officer, have you released my daughter? She has nothing to do with this. I did it all by myself."

Sure enough, she couldn't wait any longer.

Yesterday, she was so eager to confess her crimes because she was eager to take the blame upon herself.

She couldn't wait any longer today because she didn't know if the police believed her, and she desperately wanted the matter to be settled.

This is a classic case of trying to cover something up.

Zhou Yi didn't answer her question, but instead asked her, "Do you know whose child your daughter is carrying?"

“I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me. If I pressed her too hard, she would cry, and I was afraid she would do something stupid, so I didn’t dare to ask her anymore.”

Do you know Huang Chen?

Yao Fenfang asked in confusion, "Who...who is Huang Chen?"

"Your daughter's classmate."

“I don’t know her… She never talks to me about anything at school.” Yao Fenfang suddenly realized and asked excitedly, “Did he get Xiaoxue pregnant?”

“We are still investigating the situation further. We cannot determine who the child’s father is at the moment, so we need you to provide clues. You can think about what kind of man might have had the opportunity to get close to your daughter, especially around April or May of last year.”

Yao Fenfang lowered her head in thought, then suddenly looked up and asked, "Does this... have anything to do with the case?"

"Whether it's related or not is not your concern. And don't you want to know who harmed your daughter like this?"

Yao Fenfang thought for a moment and said that apart from her classmates, Tang Xue usually had little opportunity to come into contact with men, and no men would come to her home.

"Have you hired a tutor for Tang Xue?" Zhou Yi asked.

"Private tutors? We used to hire them, but they were too expensive and we couldn't afford them anymore, so we stopped."

When were you invited?

"It was in the first half of last year, I think it was for about two or three months."

"Is the tutor male?"

Yao Fenfang nodded: "It's a male teacher, surnamed Hu, named Hu Weihua. He's about my age, a math teacher at No. 2 Middle School. They said he graduated from a prestigious university, but he's too expensive..."

"Second Middle School? Do you have his phone number?" Zhou Yi asked, because the tutor's surname was Hu, the first letter of which was H, and the timing also matched.

"Yes, there is a notebook in the bedside table of my master bedroom. It is used to keep accounts, and Mr. Hu's phone number is in it."

Where do you usually have tutoring sessions?

“When I’m at the teacher’s house, I’ll drive her home if I’m on the day shift or off duty. If I’m on the night shift, she’ll come back by herself because it’s not far.”

Zhou Yi then asked for Hu Weihua's specific address, and told Yao Fenfang to think carefully again about whether there were any other men who had been in contact with Tang Xue.

After thinking it over, Yao Fenfang said no. But considering that even Huang Chen didn't know, it's likely that even if there were, she might not know.

"Yao Fenfang, do you have a boyfriend?" Zhou Yi asked.

Yao Fenfang was taken aback for a moment, but immediately shook her head.

After Zhou Yi finished questioning Yao Fenfang, Qiao Jiali not only questioned Tang Xue, but also went to the command center.

The command center contacted several banks in the city to confirm Yao Fenfang's bank account information. Only one postal savings bank near Donghai Community had Yao Fenfang's account, which matched the passbook found during yesterday's on-site investigation.

After verification, it was confirmed that Yao Fenfang's account did not have large sums of money deposited or credited; the deposits were mostly in cash.

Back then, salaries were mostly paid in cash, and then you would manually deposit the money into the bank. Once you had saved up a certain amount, you would transfer it to a fixed deposit account.

"Tang Xue is still the same as always, only nodding or shaking her head, without saying a word."

Qiao Jiali recounted the circumstances of questioning Tang Xue.

Tang Xue admitted that she and Huang Chen had a puppy love relationship, and the timing was about the same as Huang Chen's account.

But when Qiao Jiali asked her if she had had sexual relations with Huang Chen, Tang Xue nodded.

This confused Qiao Jiali. Could it be that Huang Chen was lying?

But when he thought about how Tang Xue had shaken her head when he asked her if she knew that having sex could lead to pregnancy, he remembered that she had asked her to.

They speculated that she might not be able to distinguish the boundaries of so-called sexual relationships, because according to Huang Chen, they had engaged in borderline sexual behavior.

So they asked her if she bled when she had sex with Huang Chen.

This time, Tang Xue shook her head.

Sure enough, she couldn't tell the difference.

"Tang Xue has basically confirmed what Huang Chen said. But just nodding and shaking her head like that isn't a solution. The information is too one-sided, and this form of questioning and confession can't have any effective legal effect," Qiao Jiali said.

Zhou Yi nodded and asked whether it was true or not, adding that the prosecutor's office would question whether he was inducing a confession if the student was still a minor.

"We currently lack evidence to prove that Yao Fenfang is lying. Once we have evidence, we can formally interrogate Tang Xue."

If it is proven that Yao Fenfang is lying, then the police will have a legitimate reason to list Tang Xue as a criminal suspect as well. Interrogation is not the same as questioning. A seventeen-year-old girl who is not very experienced in the world will be terrified as soon as she is handcuffed in a detention chair.

Soon, Shi Tao and the others returned one after another, and they sat down to summarize the information they had gathered.

He Bin found Yao Fenfang's ex-husband, Tang Xue's father, Tang Jun, and Yao Fenfang's brother, Yao Dazhi.

Tang Jun admitted that he got divorced because of infidelity, but he also left with almost nothing, so they were even.

As for why he didn't go to see his daughter Tang Xue, he said the responsibility lay entirely with Yao Fenfang.

When he first got divorced, he would visit his daughter every now and then, but every time he met Yao Fenfang, she would start cursing at him, and then the two would argue and part on bad terms.

Over time, in order to avoid seeing Yao Fenfang, he didn't visit his daughter for almost two years.

When he went to see his daughter again, he found that she, Tang Xue, was very cold towards him.

He Bin said, "He felt that Tang Xue's bad attitude towards him was all Yao Fenfang's doing, and she never reflected on her own problems."

Therefore, he knew absolutely nothing about Tang Xue's situation.

Then Yao Dazhi provided some information about Yao Fenfang's personal emotional issues.

He said that at the end of last year, a relative introduced Yao Fenfang to a man who was three years older than her, a carpenter, widowed, and had a son in high school.

Yao Dazhi said his sister had been seeing this man for a while and they seemed to be getting along quite well. He originally thought it would work out and was quite happy for his sister, after all, she had met the wrong person before and it hadn't been easy for her to raise her child alone all these years.

But not long ago, when the siblings were visiting their elderly mother at the nursing home, they ran into each other. Yao Dazhi asked her when she could settle things, but Yao Fenfang said that she was no longer in contact with that person. When asked why, she said that it was not suitable.

Zhou Yi asked, "When did they break up? We can find this person and ask him if he was with Yao Fenfang on the night of February 28th."

He Bin said, "We have found this person and confirmed it. Around late March, when the other party went to the plastics factory to deliver food to Yao Fenfang, Yao Fenfang clearly told him that it was not appropriate."

"Late March? That was after Zhang Hui's case was discovered. I guess Yao Fenfang was frightened."

He Bin added, "Moreover, the other party said that the two of them had not reached the point of having a relationship. Yao Fenfang was quite conservative about this matter. The two of them had never spent the night alone together, nor had she ever invited the other party to her home, and she had never even met Tang Xue."

In this way, the possibility that Yao Fenfang was not at home on February 28th can be ruled out.

At this moment, Shi Tao stood up, slammed something on the table, and said triumphantly, "Zhou Yi, this case still depends on you, Captain Shi. I have made a major discovery!"

　Yesterday, while browsing through the reader comments from previous chapters, I noticed some people were unhappy that I set the chain storyline in Liyang. I'm truly innocent! I just randomly made up the place names. There are just so many place names in my country; any place name I made up could actually exist in reality. It's really impossible to be completely unpredictable.

　　All locations are fictional; please do not assume they are real.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)