Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

On the day the case files for Fang Dayou's case were filed, Jiang Ruolan stood in front of the filing cabinet for a long time.

The cabinet was neatly stacked with several rows of files, each stack representing a case she had personally handled.

The Shen Wangshan case, fifty-three volumes, occupied an entire floor.

The New Year's Eve project was over three hundred pages long, so thick that the seal on the file folder was almost bursting open.

The Fang Dayou case, a thin volume, seemed particularly flimsy when sandwiched in the middle.

But it was this thin booklet that made her stand in front of the cabinet door for quite a while.

A man who had been repairing cars for twenty years was locked in a basement and tortured for dozens of days simply because he saw something he shouldn't have seen under a car and made a report. His fingernails were pulled out one by one, his skin was burned inch by inch with an electric soldering iron, and finally he was strangled to death with an electric wire and dumped in an abandoned factory.

Before he died, he bit off a small piece of cloth from the murderer's clothes, clutched it tightly in his palm, his ten fingers without nails, his knuckles stiff when the forensic doctor pried them open.

She closed the cabinet door and returned to her desk.

On the table was a newly arrived document—a commendation notice issued by the provincial department, awarding the special task force investigating the Fang Dayou case a collective third-class merit.

She read through the document, signed it, and put it aside.

Then he opened the notebook and wrote a line on a new page:

"February's work focus: Building criminal investigation capabilities at the grassroots police station level."

Shen Wangshan fell, Nie Shichang fell, Xu Yaozong fell, and Tan Jingsong also fell.

After each operation, she thought that Yi'an's underground forces would quiet down for a while.

But each time, new cases always emerge from unexpected places.

It wasn't about imported drugs, a building materials monopoly, or a murder case related to demolition.

This time, it emerged from an ordinary residential community.

Spring comes late to Yi'an. In the early morning of March, Jiang Ruolan had just arrived at her office when she received a call from the command center.

On the other end of the phone, the on-duty police officer's voice was urgent and tense:

"Director Jiang, a murder has occurred in the Lijing Garden residential area in the west of the city. The deceased was a middle-aged woman who was found dead in her bedroom by her husband."

The Chengxi Police Station has arrived at the scene and their preliminary assessment is homicide; there is a large amount of blood at the scene. The police station said…the scene is quite gruesome, and they suggest you go there in person.”

When Jiang Ruolan put down the phone, she tapped her fingers lightly twice on the table.

She picked up her police cap, strode out of the office, and said to Lu Zheng, who was walking towards her in the corridor:

"Lijing Garden, murder case. Come with me."

Lijing Garden is located in the west of the city. It was built in 2007 and is one of the earliest commercial housing communities in Yi'an.

When it was first launched, GG said it was "the first five-star home for the people of Yi An," and there were queues outside the sales office for two days and two nights.

More than a decade has passed, and this place has changed from a high-end residential area to an ordinary old community. Some of the exterior wall tiles have fallen off, the shrubs in the green belt have been turned into vegetable gardens by residents, and the parking spaces are crowded with electric vehicles and tricycles.

But compared to the old tenement buildings in the east of the city that are slated for demolition, this place is still respectable—the people who live here have stable jobs, social security, and their children attend schools nearby.

They are the most solid foundation of the city of Yi An. For them, news about triads, protectors, and serial killers is mostly just something to talk about on their phone screens, far removed from their own lives.

The building where the incident occurred is located in the northeast corner of the residential complex. It has eighteen floors, two elevators, and four apartments per floor.

The police tape was set up at the entrance of the building, and several police officers from the Chengxi Police Station were guarding it. A number of residents had already gathered around.

They were wearing pajamas and slippers, carrying freshly bought breakfast, craning their necks to peer into the stairwell, their expressions shifting between curiosity and unease.

A young woman holding a child whispered to the person next to her:

"I heard she lived on the thirteenth floor. I see her in the elevator every day; she's a very friendly person. How could she suddenly..."

Jiang Ruolan walked through the crowd and bent down to crawl under the police line.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, the corridor on the thirteenth floor was filled with people in police uniforms.

The head of the Chengxi Police Station, surnamed Tian, ​​was a round-faced man in his forties. He was usually all smiles, but today his face was deathly pale. Seeing Jiang Ruolan emerge from the elevator, he hurried over, his voice noticeably lower than usual.

"Director Jiang, over here."

As he walked, he reported, "The deceased was named Feng Wanqiu, 45 years old, a local of Yi'an, who worked at the Chengxi Subdistrict Office."

Her husband's name is Cao Weimin, and he works at Yi'an Bank. They have been married for eighteen years and have a daughter who is a freshman at university in the provincial capital.

The person who called the police was her husband—he said he worked overtime at the bank until after midnight last night and didn't get home until he found the bedroom door locked from the inside, and no one answered no matter how much he knocked.

He used his key to open the door and saw his wife lying on the bed, covered in blood. He immediately called the police. The police report states that the incident occurred at 1:07 PM.

Where is he?

"Our staff are with him in the property management office downstairs. He was quite emotional and cried several times, but he's calmed down a bit now."

Jiang Ruolan stopped at the bedroom door.

The door frame was sealed off, and the door was half open. From inside, one could hear the forensic doctors and technicians talking in hushed tones and the clicking of camera shutters.

She took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and went inside.

The bedroom was dark, with the curtains drawn tightly, and only a few survey lights set up by the technicians casting a pale white light on the walls and bed.

The air was thick with a rusty, bloody stench, mixed with the lingering, faint scent of jasmine incense in the bedroom, a sweetness that made one want to vomit.

The sight on the bed caused Jiang Ruolan's pupils to contract sharply—

A middle-aged woman lay on her back in the center of the bed, wearing a plain cotton nightgown, her hands tied behind her back with a nylon cable tie, and a white towel stuffed in her mouth.

She had a very deep transverse cut on her neck, which stretched from the left carotid artery to below the right carotid artery, almost cutting through half of her neck.

Blood sprayed onto the headboard, walls, and ceiling in an arterial jet, forming a shocking dark red fan-shaped pattern.

The sheets were soaked in blood, and stepping on them made a sticky sound.

Forensic pathologist Zheng was standing bent over by the bed, gently cleaning the blood clots around the edge of the victim's neck wound with a soft brush.

Seeing Jiang Ruolan enter, he straightened up, took off the glove on one hand, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

His expression was more serious than usual, his brows furrowed so deeply they were almost knotted together.

"The cause of death was a sharp-force laceration to the neck, with a wound depth of about four to five centimeters, severing the carotid artery and trachea. The weapon was likely a single-edged knife with a blade width of at least three centimeters, extremely sharp, with clean edges and no serrated marks from repeated cutting—a single, clean, and decisive fatal blow."

The time of death was approximately between 10 and 11 p.m. last night.

Aside from the fatal wound to the neck, there were no obvious signs of self-defense or sexual assault on the deceased. The towel stuffed in her mouth and the wristbands on her wrists were placed there after her death.

.................