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

Chapter 268 God’s Will
Zhou Yi and Qiao Jiali immediately perked up their ears.

"Captain Shi, what's wrong?"

Shi Tao said, "Do you remember when we were afraid that Tang Xue might do something drastic and commit suicide, we called Yao Fenfang back? After opening the door, Tang Xue was hiding in the room and shouted something?"

“She said…” Zhou Yi’s expression suddenly changed, and she said, word by word, “The baby is crying again.”

In an instant, Zhou Yi understood what Shi Tao meant!
The baby is crying again!
When did the baby start crying?
Since Tang Xue was brought back, she has been in a semi-closed state, leading them to instinctively believe that she has some mental problems and is experiencing auditory hallucinations due to her inability to cope with all of this.

Given the circumstances at the time, the fact that she could say those words proves that she was hallucinating.

Zhou Yi and the others didn't hear any crying, and therefore Zhou Yi ignored those few words.

Case analysis is inherently a very mentally taxing task, and sometimes it's easy to become blinded by one's own perspective.

Zhou Yi was like that, while Shi Tao was the clear-sighted observer.

Of all the police officers, only he and Zhou Yi had heard Tang Xue say those words.

"Team Leader Shi, I love you so much!" Zhou Yi suddenly hugged Shi Tao tightly.

This startled Shi Tao.

Zhou Yi let go of his hand and couldn't wait to walk back.

Qiao Jiali didn't understand what was going on, but she knew that Zhou Yi must have discovered something very important, so she immediately followed him.

Watching the two figures disappear into the distance, Shi Tao couldn't help but say, "That brat, he's such a jumpy person."

Zhou Yi immediately interrogated Tang Xue again. Tang Xue, who had just been brought back, sat in the interrogation room again, looking flustered and unaware of what had happened.

"Tang Xue, I have a few more questions to ask you," Zhou Yi said.

"Uncle...I...I've already told you everything I know," Tang Xue said in a panic.

“When we found you yesterday, you said something to your mother, ‘The baby is crying again.’ I asked you, why did you add the word ‘again’? When was the last time you heard the child crying?”

After Zhou Yi asked the question, Qiao Jiali finally understood what Zhou Yi meant.

If the child died at birth, how could Tang Xue have heard the "baby's cries"?

All psychological obstacles in people have causes and effects; they cannot arise out of thin air.

Tang Xue must have heard other children cry before, but if her child died at birth, she wouldn't have developed a mental block because she had heard other children cry before.

This is the key point Shi Tao was reminding us of. Perhaps Shi Tao didn't think about it in such detail, but that's definitely the gist of it.

"I...I'm not sure...That night, after I had given birth, I was half asleep when I suddenly heard a baby crying, which startled me awake."

How long was the crying?

"It should be... very short... like when you're crying and then suddenly there's no sound... I thought I misheard. Later, when he was about to leave, I grabbed his hand and asked him if the baby was crying. I think I heard the baby crying."

Qiao Jiali hurriedly asked, "What was Huang Jianhui's reaction?"

“He…” Tang Xue swallowed hard, hesitating.

Zhou Yi asked in a deep voice, "Did he show any signs of panic?"

Tang Xue hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "He said I misheard and told me not to overthink it... but... I feel like I really heard it..."

Zhou Yi fell silent, and with his silence, the air in the interrogation room seemed to drop to freezing point.

Finally, Zhou Yi spoke. His voice was dry and hoarse, like a heavy icebreaker breaking through the thick ice.

He said, "Tang Xue, you already know the answer in your heart, don't you?"

"I……"

"Whether the child you gave birth to ever truly came into this world, even if only for a very short time, is a truth that only you, as the mother, know!"

When Zhou Yi uttered the word "mother," Tang Xue finally broke down completely.

This word, like a huge, spiked iron ball, irresistibly and easily shattered the shell of self-protection and self-deception she had always maintained.

Her eyes were wide open, utterly empty, just like the filthy pit where her child had been disposed of.

Then she murmured, "He killed our child...he killed our child..."

Two lines of tears flowed from her eyes, but in Zhou Yi's eyes, these two lines were not tears, but the blood flowing from the body of the poor newborn child as he was dismembered, flowing into the dirty, dark sewage outlet where he was buried, flowing into the eyes of the young girl who gave birth to him.

In the interrogation room, Tang Xue seemed possessed, repeating the same sentence over and over again. She didn't cry her heart out, nor did she scream at the top of her lungs; she just kept repeating herself like a lifeless machine.

Zhou Yi knew that when she was pulled out of that self-deceiving shell, she was no different from a dead person.

She did not kill anyone or dismember anyone, so she will not be convicted of a serious crime, but she will spend the rest of her life atoning for her sins.

Zhou Yi and Qiao Jiali waited until she calmed down a bit, and then, after confirming several times that she had indeed heard the child cry briefly, they had her sign the statement.

Leaving the interrogation room again, Zhou Yi felt no joy at solving the case. He said weakly to Qiao Jiali, "Sister Qiao, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'll have to trouble you to apply for Huang Jianhui's detention notice. I feel a little tired and want to go home and sleep as soon as possible."

Qiao Jiali nodded: "Why are you being so polite with me? Don't worry. You've worked hard enough, go back and rest. Anyway, Huang Jianhui is bringing his son Huang Chen to have his blood drawn tomorrow, so it'll be perfect. If he doesn't come, we'll go and invite him in person."

Zhou Yi thanked Qiao Jiali and walked along the long corridor into the night.

Shi Tao walked over from the other end and asked in confusion, "Xiao Qiao, where is Zhou Yi going?"

Qiao Jiali looked at the departing figure with some heartache and said, "Sometimes I forget that he is actually just a young man in his early twenties. He also gets tired sometimes."

That night, Zhou Yi lay in his own bed, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep.

He wasn't devastated by the truth of the case; he was simply saddened by the child who had been in the world for less than an hour or two before being killed by his own father.

From a legal perspective, once a child is born and separated from the mother's body, he/she is a person with legal subject status, a citizen.

This child was the youngest victim in all the murder cases he had encountered since he became a criminal police officer through an internal exam in his previous life and joined the Nanming Branch Bureau.

This child has never even experienced the sunrise and sunset of a single day in this world.

But this life, so fleeting like a flower in bloom, somehow left behind a piece of intestinal tissue, which was recovered by the police when they were retrieving Zhang Hui's body parts.

At his own suggestion, he was sent to the provincial capital's DNA laboratory, becoming the first case in the province to use DNA testing, which led to the discovery of another deceased person.

Could it be that, as Old Qin said, this child was shouting at him?
Could it really be that fate has intervened?
……

The next morning, when Qiao Jiali saw Zhou Yi walk into the office looking energetic and greet her, she immediately felt relieved.

Being a police officer, especially a criminal investigator, requires self-psychological preparation.

"Huang Jianhui's detention notice was approved by Captain Ni, who got it from Captain Shi." Qiao Jiali placed a document on the table.

Director Xie and Captain Wu are still in the province, so Ni Jianrong is now in charge of criminal investigation in Hongcheng.

"Although Captain Shi is usually a bit cynical, he's really reliable when it matters," Zhou Yi said.

"That's just how Team Leader Shi is. Every leader has their own way of doing things." Qiao Jiali didn't ask Zhou Yi how he felt; there was no need to elaborate on such matters.

"By the way, yesterday Captain Shi and I interrogated Yao Fenfang again. Here is the transcript, please take a look."

Zhou Yi took the investigation record handed to him by Qiao Jiali and began to look through it.

Based on Tang Xue's previous interrogation confession, Shi Tao directly told Yao Fenfang that Tang Xue had confessed all the facts and warned her not to resist any longer.

Yao Fenfang still didn't believe it and insisted that she was the one who killed the person until Shi Tao placed the attendance sheet and call records in front of her, at which point she stopped talking.

Shi Tao told her that the police had investigated and found out that Tang Xue had not killed the child; the murderer was someone else. Therefore, he asked her to confess the truth and stop hiding anything. This was to help herself and her daughter.

Upon hearing that the murderer was someone else, Yao Fenfang was shocked and excitedly asked who did it and who had caused her daughter such a terrible tragedy.

Shi Tao said, "Get this straight. You're not a victim's family member now. You're a criminal suspect who committed perjury and obstructed the police from handling the case. You're not buying vegetables at the market. I'm the one asking you questions. What right do you have to ask me?"

After being intimidated by Shi Tao, Yao Fenfang confessed everything.

Zhou Yi was very clear about this. It wasn't because Shi Tao had scared her; the key was that she was convinced that Tang Xue had killed someone, which was why she was determined to take the blame for her daughter.

But Shi Tao's statement that the murderer was someone else completely shattered her original motive for the crime.

Yao Fenfang's confession also matched Tang Xue's testimony.

On the evening of the 28th, she scolded her daughter over some trivial matter. Tang Xue slammed the door and went back to her room, locking it behind her. This kind of thing had happened countless times between them.

So when she went out the next day, she didn't notice whether Tang Xue was home, even though theoretically school starts earlier than her work hours.

Then she worked a full 24 hours at the factory and returned home exhausted.

She said that as soon as she opened the door, she felt something was wrong because there was a strange smell in the room.

(End of this chapter)