Film and Television: My Cheat Code is AI

There happened to be one elevator under maintenance at night, and the elevator doors would be open again after midnight. At midnight, Ji Jie brought Zhang Yang and Tian Rui to Building 13 of the community, and the property management staff began operating the elevator doors.

Tian Rui was on her phone downstairs talking to Ji Jie: "Sister Ji, the door is about to open, be careful."

The property manager pressed a bunch of buttons on the control panel, and Zhang Yang watched from the side, getting a general idea of ​​what was going on—this guy was at best capable of restarting a computer if it crashed; relying on him for intrusion prevention was practically useless.

On the 9th floor of Building 13, Ji Jie stood in front of an apartment and asked, "Which floor does Mr. Tong live on?"

The property management staff pointed and said, "This is the door."

Ji Jie then asked, "Who else is in their family?"

"It's his wife. You don't doubt her, do you? She's a good old lady."

Ji Jie glanced at him and said calmly, "None of us have any doubts."

Tian Rui's voice rang out on the phone again: "Sister Ji, are you ready yet? If we run into some old, senile, drunk person right now, we'll all be in big trouble."

Ji Jie said on the phone, "Turn it off."

After hanging up the phone, Tian Rui told the property management, "Turn it off."

The group went downstairs and met up. Ji Jie asked the security guard on night duty, "Around midnight that night, did you clearly hear a scream from inside this building?"

The security guard nodded and said, "Yes, it was the middle of the night, and the surroundings were very quiet, so I remember it very clearly."

"Do you remember if anyone entered or left this building around midnight?"

"There's no one here. I told the police everything when they asked me that day. If you don't believe me..." The security guard was about to continue when Ji Jie interrupted him: "No, thank you, goodbye."

After the security guard left, Ji Jie turned to Zhang Yang and Tian Rui and said, "This murderer should be someone from this building."

Zhang Yang nodded: "Unfortunately, he is using an external network connection, which is not directly related to the residents' home IP. As long as he unplugs the network cable, the corresponding port on the switch will be disconnected, making it impossible to accurately pinpoint which household it is."

Back at the station, Ji Jie and Tian Rui went to the girls' dormitory, while Zhang Yang also spent the night there.

The next morning, Ji Jie took the materials to Lao Zheng and said, "Lao Zheng, this is the elevator operation time on-site handling record that Zhou, the branch captain, instructed us to conduct supplementary investigation. I request that the case be reopened for investigation."

Old Zheng took it, flipped through it, and said, "Did you find any problems?"

Ji Jie said, "Mr. Tong's body will be cremated tomorrow, and perhaps the evidence is on him."

Old Zheng was in a dilemma. "Oh dear, this is a bit difficult. We don't have any evidence at all. How can we reopen the case and investigate? Besides, the cremation date has already been set. We can't ask them to change the date."

Ji Jie looked at Zhang Yang and said, "Zhang Yang has evidence. The computer logs in the property management's computer prove that someone did indeed hack into and run the program on the day of the incident. Although the murderer deleted the scheduled task, the logs left login records and operation traces. That is the evidence."

Old Zheng looked at Zhang Yang: "Tell me about it."

Zhang Yang took two steps forward and picked up the conversation: "Old Zheng, the computer in the property management office is connected to the elevator control cabinet and manages six elevators through software called OTIS Elevonic Supervision. How did the murderer do it? He first found the network cable interface in the telecommunications room on the twelfth floor, used his laptop to connect to the community's local area network, and then remotely logged into the management backend of the computer in the property management office."

The password for that backend was written in plain text in the configuration file, rendering it useless. Once inside, he sent a timed command to the elevator control cabinet. At the designated time, the elevator door on a certain floor of Building 13 would automatically open, while the elevator car itself would be locked in maintenance mode on another floor. This way, if someone pressed the elevator button on that floor and habitually walked in, they could easily fall into the shaft.

He paused, then broke down the technical details: "The command was triggered at exactly midnight, and at 1:02 AM he logged in again and deleted the scheduled task completely. He deleted the task command itself, but he couldn't delete the login logs and operation logs, because those were hard-coded into the system. That's where we got the records—source IP, MAC address, operation time, everything was there."

Old Zheng listened with a frown for a while, then roughly grasped the key points: "What you're saying is confusing me. In short, it means—someone controlled the elevator to kill people?"

Ji Jie continued, "That's right."

Old Zheng put the materials on the table and said, "Then hand over the evidence, and I'll go talk to Captain Zhou."

Zhang Yang printed out all the evidence he had saved on the USB drive that day and handed it to Lao Zheng.

Ji Jie picked up her bag and said to Zhang Yang and Tian Rui, "Let's go, let's go back to the neighborhood and ask Mr. Tong Jiaxian's wife about the situation."

The three drove to the apartment building and parked in an empty space when another car pulled up behind them. The window rolled down, and in the driver's seat was Xiao Liao, whom they had met that day. She leaned out and said politely but expressionlessly, "Excuse me, you've taken my parking spot."

Tian Rui pointed to the side: "Isn't there an empty parking space over there? Can't you park there?"

Xiao Liao looked at Tian Rui expressionlessly and said, word by word, "That's someone else's parking space. I can't park there."

Ji Jie tugged at Tian Rui and nodded to Xiao Liao: "It's okay, I'll go move the car."

Zhang Yang didn't participate in the minor altercation, but he noticed something else: a "Qianfeng High-Tech Park" access pass was pasted on the windshield of Xiao Liao's car. He glanced at it a few more times, said nothing, and got into the car with Ji Jie. Ji Jie backed the car out and parked it in the adjacent parking space.

After Xiao Liao parked the car and walked away, Tian Rui muttered, "That's really annoying. Let's go upstairs."

The three of them went up to the ninth floor and knocked on the door of the Tong family. Tong Jiaxian's wife welcomed them in, turned around to pour water, and moved very slowly without looking at them.

Ji Jie began, "We came here this time to inquire about the situation of Elder Tong Jiaxian again."

The old lady placed the water glass on the coffee table, sat down in a chair, and folded her hands on her knees: "Go ahead and ask."

"What time did Mr. Tong leave home that day?"

11:55.

Tian Rui leaned forward slightly: "How do you remember so clearly?"

The old lady's gaze fell on a spot on the coffee table, her tone as flat as if she were reciting a memorized passage: "I remember very clearly every time he went out late at night."

Does he often go out late at night?

"Yes."

Do you know where he went?

A look of disgust flashed across the old woman's face—a disdain etched into her wrinkles and accumulated over a long period. She said, "I don't want to know."

Tian Rui softly added, "Actually, you knew, didn't you?"

The old woman turned her face away, her voice hardening: "I said, I don't want to know, I don't want to know anything." She stood up, as if to see them out, "You can leave now. He's dead, what are you doing here? Tomorrow he'll be ashes, and no one will know about this anymore."

Ji Jie remained seated, her tone still steady: "We just want to know the truth."

"The truth?" The old woman turned to look at her, her eyes dry, but her lips trembling. "The truth is he's dead. He accidentally fell and died. You can leave now."

Ji Jie and Tian Rui exchanged a glance, knowing they couldn't get any more information out of her today. The three of them packed their things and stood up. As they walked to the door, Ji Jie looked back and saw the old lady still standing in the middle of the living room, her back to the door, motionless.

After going downstairs, Ji Jie was organizing her thoughts as she walked when she suddenly said, "This case should be a crime of passion."

Tian Rui continued, "That old lady definitely knows what's going on. There's a third party, but..." She frowned, her tone filled with utter bewilderment, "Who would be the lover of a man nearing seventy? What would she want from him? His age? His lack of hygiene?" The more she spoke, the more outrageous it seemed. She paused, then added, "Could it be that she wanted to kill him after her marriage to the old man fell through?"

Ji Jie almost burst out laughing at her words, but she held it in and said, "How come you haven't improved at all? Think about it from the other side."

Tian Rui paused for a moment, her mind raced, and then her eyes lit up: "Oh, I know! It was this old man who was harassing that woman, and she wanted to kill him to get rid of him."

Ji Jie nodded, then returned to the timeline of the case, pondering as she walked: "He left home at 11:55 and died at 12:15. Where did he go during those twenty minutes?"

Tian Rui blurted out, "At that woman's house."

Ji Jie glanced at her: "You need to have evidence, you can't just guess."

Zhang Yang, who hadn't said much until now, spoke up: "Do you think they dare to go home? A mistress and an old man, I think they must be somewhere in this building." He looked up at the tower in front of him. "Think about it, what if all the residents on one floor are not home? Wouldn't that be a good place? High-end residential areas have security cameras now, but this one doesn't have many. They could secretly meet on one floor and no one would notice."

Ji Jie stopped and thought for a moment after hearing this, then agreed with the idea: "That makes sense." She turned to Tian Rui and assigned her a task, "Tian Rui, go to the property management office and check the resident information, focusing on the one named Xiao Liao. Remember to be tactful and don't alert him. Also, check the resident information for Building 13. If all the residents on a certain floor are frequently not at home, that floor is very likely the crime scene."

Tian Rui nodded and noted it down: "Okay."

Just then, Zhang Yang's phone rang. He walked aside to answer it, listened for a while, hung up, and came back to say, "Sister Ji, the re-examination report for the body is out."

Ji Jie said, "Okay, let's go get it."

……

Branch Technical Section

Xiao Gao handed over the report, flipped it open, pointed to the conclusion, and said, "It's not much different from the autopsy report at the scene. The deceased fell from a height, suffered a skull base fracture, a ruptured liver, and died from massive bleeding."

Ji Jie took the book, flipped through a couple of pages, and asked, "Can you determine from which floor the person fell?"

Xiao Gao gave a wry smile and pushed up his glasses: "Sister Ji, there is a difference between 10 meters and 100 meters, but the problem is that the deceased lived on the 9th floor, and the tower has a maximum of 25 floors. This distance range is too short, and it is impossible to accurately determine which floor it is based on the data."

Ji Jie nodded without asking further questions. Xiao Gao, however, didn't stop there. He flipped to the last page of the report, pointed to the supplementary section, and said, "However, there's a new discovery: a small amount of metallic paint residue was found under the deceased's fingernails."

Ji Jie looked up and asked, "What does this prove?"

Xiao Gao spread his hands and said with an honest smile, "I can only check the results of what you've given me. As for what it proves, that's your job."

Ji Jie smiled, closed the report, patted Xiao Gao on the shoulder and said, "Okay, thank you."

After leaving the technical department, Zhang Yang walked down the corridor, pondering as he went. Suddenly, he said, "Sister Ji, do you think it's possible that when Tong Jiaxian fell, she instinctively reached out to grab something, and what she grabbed was the metal paint from that spot, either from the door frame or the elevator shaft?

Ji Jie didn't stop walking. After thinking for a moment, she nodded and said, "That makes sense. If that's the case, then the place corresponding to the metallic paint is the point of impact. Finding that location will solve half the case."

Just then, Ji Jie's phone rang. It was Tian Rui calling. Tian Rui's voice was low, but her speech was fast, clearly indicating that she had just finished checking information with the property management: "Sister Ji, we've found out. There are currently no residents on the 13th floor of Building 13. Residents 133 and 132 have gone abroad and registered their apartments as rentals with the property management. Resident 131 is a family of three who went on vacation to Australia a week before the incident."

After listening, Ji Jie was silent for two seconds, then she connected the clues in her mind and said into the phone, "Okay, I understand." After hanging up, she turned to Zhang Yang and said, "13th floor, not adjacent to any other buildings, no residents, no one would pass by at night. If Tong Jiaxian went to the 13th floor that night, everything makes sense."

Zhang Yang also realized what was happening and continued, "He left at 11:55, took the elevator to the 13th floor, where the murderer was waiting for him. They chatted for less than 20 minutes, then the murderer pushed him down the stairs and left. At 12:15, the security guard heard the screams. The timing was exactly right."

Ji Jie didn't say anything more. She picked up her phone and dialed Lao Zheng's number, requesting the trace evidence team to conduct a comprehensive trace evidence examination on the 13th floor of Building 13.

Around midnight that night, the trace evidence team and Ji Jie and her team arrived at the 13th floor of Building 13. The corridor was empty, and both doors were covered with a thin layer of dust. There were no signs of recent contact on the door handles. Xiao Gao led his team straight to the elevator entrance, and with flashlights, they examined the elevator door frame and door frame inch by inch.

In less than fifteen minutes, Xiao Gao squatted down below the left side of the elevator door frame, shone his flashlight at an angle, and as the light swept across his face, a faint scratch appeared on the metal door frame. He took out a magnifying glass and examined it closely for a few seconds, then turned to Ji Jie and said, "Sister Ji, I found it. Four parallel scratches, the spacing and width of which match a person's fingernail."

Ji Jie squatted down to examine the scratches. The forensic examiner placed a scale next to the scratches and took photos. Xiao Gao pointed to the direction of the scratches and said, "Thumb down, four fingers up. This means the deceased entered the elevator backwards. He was facing someone, and that person pushed him down when he wasn't looking."

Ji Jie stared at the scratch mark for a long time, then slowly said, "In the midst of a reluctant farewell, I was pushed down."

Zhang Yang stood behind her and whispered, "That should be it. The metallic paint under her fingernails was scraped off this door frame. Once you compare the ingredients, it will be clear."

Just then, the elevator doors opened, and Tian Rui walked out, holding a stack of resident information registration forms that had just been copied from the property management office. She saw a group of forensic investigators bustling around the door frame and knew she had found the right place. She walked up to Ji Jie and handed her the list: "Sister Ji, the information for all the residents of Building 13 is here, arranged by floor."

Tian Rui continued, "The owner of that car has also been identified."

[This is a combined chapter; there's one update today. Three updates tomorrow. We've surpassed 100 monthly votes, thank you everyone! Please vote with more monthly votes, thank you all.]

[Ten chapters on the first day of release, totaling approximately 30,000 words, and then I guarantee 6,000 to 8,000 words per day.]

[Data from the new book launch period is very important, thank you everyone.]

[An extra chapter will be added tomorrow; I had some things to take care of today and couldn't finish it.]