Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

Xue Yonggang stopped and looked down at his rough, deformed hands covered in scars.

The interrogation room was silent for a long time, then he suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse and low, as if he were talking to someone who wasn't there:

"The night my wife passed away, she held my hand and said, 'You have to eat well from now on.' She died without ever knowing what killed her. I have no evidence, no money, no lawyer. All I have are these two hands, and I can't even save her life. I contacted their company, and they said it was because she was unwell. I contacted people in your system, and they told me to get a test done, but after I gave them half a bottle of capsules, I still haven't received the results. I've waited for so long, but I haven't received them. I can't wait any longer."

Jiang Ruolan remained silent for a long time before speaking to him in a slow and clear tone:

"Xue Yonggang, I understand your anger, and every tear you shed in the interrogation room was real. But that cannot justify taking someone else's life. Your wife's death caused you pain, but the person you killed also had parents who sat in the living room every night waiting for her to come home."

Your wife died from illness caused by consuming substandard capsules. You should pursue legal action against the manufacturers and sellers, instead of ending the life of a young person who was also deceived by Han Qiuping and Luo Mingfa.

Your wife's number is 273. I'm telling you here today that we will pursue Han Qiuping and Luo Mingfa's criminal liability according to the law, confiscate all their illegal gains, and uproot their sales network. You should be standing in court testifying against them, not sitting here waiting for a verdict for intentional homicide. That's the reason your wife told you to live well in her last moments.

She closed the transcript, stood up, walked to the door of the interrogation room, glanced back at Xue Yonggang, and said:

"We have sent your wife's capsules for comprehensive toxicity testing. I will personally deliver the results to you once they are available."

On the day Xue Yonggang was transferred to the detention center, all the physical evidence extracted by the special task force from Luo Mingfa's workshop and Han Qiuping's warehouse had been sent to the provincial department's technical center.

The provincial department, in conjunction with the food and drug administration, launched a two-month special operation to crack down on illegal placental products. A total of six underground workshops were shut down, more than ten criminal suspects were arrested, and tens of thousands of illegal capsules of various kinds were seized.

Han Qiuping was transferred for review and prosecution on charges of producing and selling toxic and harmful food and illegal business operations. Luo Mingfa was arrested on the same charges. They will face severe sanctions for multiple crimes.

Jiang Ruolan made a special trip to the North City Cemetery one weekend evening.

She carried with her a formally bound autopsy report, a legal document issued at the priority of the provincial technical center in coordination with the special investigation team. The conclusion stated that there was a direct causal relationship between the consumption of substandard placental capsules and the victim's pre-existing acute liver failure.

Xue Yonggang's wife is buried under a newly planted pine tree on the east side of the cemetery. The tombstone is new, with her name and birth and death dates engraved on it, and a small photograph embedded in it.

She appears to be in her forties in the photo, with gentle features and a slight smile.

She sealed the report in a waterproof document bag and placed it in front of the tombstone.

Then she stepped back, straightened her police uniform collar, took off her hat, and bowed three times to the woman she had never met but whose name and experiences she had repeatedly heard during the investigation.

It was almost 8 p.m. when I got back to the station.

Lu Zheng was still in his office organizing the case report of the special operation when he saw her push the door open and hand her a printed document.

The report included a statistical table listing all the capsule traceability data seized in this special operation. Each capsule that flowed into the market corresponds to a customer number, from 1 to 273. Behind each number is a woman who once trusted Yuejifang GG and bought these capsules.

She said that after reviewing the data, she would extract line number 273 separately and include it as a social investigation document in the sentencing details of Xue Yonggang's intentional homicide case. His motive for the crime stemmed directly from the death of his wife, who was the final figure in this massive industrial chain.

This number shouldn't be buried in a table; it should be read out in court so that the judge knows that this chain of killing one person and taking another is never an abstract concept.

Lu Zheng wrote these down in his notebook and was about to get up and go back to his office when he suddenly stopped at the door.

He turned halfway around and asked in a deliberate tone:

"Director Jiang, how desperate must a person be to resort to such an extreme method to seek justice?"

He had clearly been holding this question in his heart for a long time, and only now did he carefully consider asking it.

Jiang Ruolan put down the materials in her hand, remained silent for a few seconds, and then answered him:

"Not just one day. It was every single day. Every day he would open his bedside table and see that half-empty bottle of capsules, every day he would dream of his wife rolling around in bed, and every day he would pass by that still-open Yuejifang (a massage parlor). Every day he waited for the diagnose was like shouting in the dark, until finally he felt that no one would answer him. The law failed to give him the right response at the right time, and he used the wrong method, but the voice that should have responded to him—regulation, rights protection, and judicial relief—was indeed absent when he needed it most."

After Xue Yonggang was transferred to the detention center, Jiang Ruolan arranged for Zhao Rui to retrieve his wife's ashes from the temporary storage area of ​​the funeral home and bury them under the newly planted pine tree on the east side of the Chengnan Cemetery.

The urn was small, and Zhao Rui wiped it twice with his police uniform sleeve before placing it in the grave.

He said that when Xue Yonggang heard the news in the meeting room, he banged his handcuffs against the armrest of the iron chair several times, making a loud clanging sound, and cried for a long time.

Zhao Rui said that was the first time he had ever seen Xue Yonggang cry. He didn't cry when Xue talked about his wife's passing in the interrogation room, and he didn't cry when he stood in the center of Qiao Xiaoyue's living room during the crime scene identification, looking at the human figure drawn on the floor with chalk. But he cried on the afternoon he learned that his wife had finally been laid to rest.

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