Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

The sound of the keyboard tapping was crisp and firm in the quiet night, like a kind of sleepless determination.

Summer comes earlier than usual in Ngee Ann.

It's only mid-June, but the temperature has been hovering around 34 or 35 degrees Celsius for a week. The air is thick with a humid and muggy smell, as if a downpour has been holding back for a long time but refuses to come.

The leaves of the sycamore trees in the city bureau compound were curled up by the sun, and the cicadas started chirping at seven in the morning and didn't stop until dark.

Jiang Ruolan has been in Yi'an for half a year.

The cases of Shen Wangshan, Gu Changhe, and Liao Guangcheng entered the judicial process one after another. On the day the first-instance judgment of the Provincial High Court was issued, she read through the thick stack of judgments from beginning to end in her office.

Shen Wangshan was sentenced to death and deprived of his political rights for life; Gu Changhe was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of his political rights for life, and all his personal property was confiscated; Fang Xuewen, Qin Chuan, Qian Shouyi, Ren Pengfei and others were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from eight to twenty years.

The last paragraph of the judgment reads—

"This case is one of the most serious organized crime cases investigated in our province since the launch of the campaign against organized crime, involving the most state personnel, the largest amount of money, and the worst social impact."

She closed the judgment, without celebration or relief, simply locking it in the filing cabinet before turning to the next case.

In the past six months, with the support of the provincial department, the Yian City Public Security Bureau has completed a large-scale internal reorganization. The Criminal Investigation Detachment has been expanded to sixty people, and a new batch of young people who graduated from police academy have been recruited. Lu Zheng was officially promoted to the head of the Criminal Investigation Detachment, and his police rank has been increased by one star.

Zhao Rui was transferred from Shiqiao County to the Municipal Bureau to serve as the deputy head of the Economic Investigation Detachment. In his words, "Finally, I don't have to deal with the messy affairs of 100,000 people in two towns and four townships all by myself."

Everything seemed to be moving in a positive direction, and the security data confirmed this.

In the first half of the year, the criminal case rate in Yi'an dropped by nearly half compared to the same period last year. Street fights and brawls have almost disappeared, and even petty theft has decreased significantly.

But Jiang Ruolan knew in her heart that Shen Wangshan's downfall had only removed the biggest poisonous weed in Yi'an, and countless invisible roots still remained in the soil.

Those petty thugs and hooligans who relied on the Fengmao Group during Shen Wangshan's era did not automatically become law-abiding citizens after losing their backers. Instead, like a pack of wild dogs without their alpha, they scattered and sought new ways to hunt.

Some started working independently, engaging in small-scale loan sharking and underground gambling; others formed new small gangs in groups of three to five, which, although not as large as Fengmao's, were no less capable of harassing ordinary people; still others simply switched to more covert forms of crime—

Telecommunications fraud, online gambling, and cross-provincial drug trafficking are giving local police officers a major headache.

That morning, just as Jiang Ruolan arrived at her office, Lu Zheng pushed the door open and came in, holding a brown paper file folder in his hand. The expression on his face reminded Jiang Ruolan of how he looked when he reported the floating corpse case in the Qinglong River half a year ago.

"Director Jiang, there's a case."

He placed the file folder on the table. "Found in the east of the city this morning. The deceased was a female college student, twenty years old, a sophomore at Yi An Teachers College, named Su Nian."

Jiang Ruolan opened the file bag, inside which was a stack of preliminary materials from the on-site investigation.

The deceased, Su Nian, was a local of Yi'an, living in the old town area in the east of the city. Her parents were ordinary wage earners.

The body was found in an old residential building in the east of the city that was about to be demolished. Most of the residents had already moved out, with only a few holdouts remaining.

The person who reported the case was an old man who collected recyclables. He went to that building to collect scraps in the morning and found a body in an empty room on the third floor. He was so frightened that he ran away without even riding his tricycle.

"What was the cause of death?" Jiang Ruolan flipped to the forensic doctor's preliminary report.

Lu Zheng's voice deepened:

"Suffocation. But not ordinary suffocation—she was suffocated to death by having her head wrapped in layers of plastic wrap."

Forensic examiners found residue of plastic wrap in the deceased's nasal cavity and trachea. The time of death was estimated to be between 10 p.m. and midnight last night.

There were no signs of sexual assault, and all her belongings—phone, wallet, student ID—were intact, ruling out the possibility of robbery or sexual assault.

Jiang Ruolan's finger stopped on the report.

Wrapping her head in plastic wrap and suffocating her to death reminded her of an extremely rare murder pattern.

In criminal psychology, this method usually points to two possibilities:

Either the killer and the victim had a deep personal grudge, and the killer used this slow and cruel method to vent their hatred; or a professional killer was carrying out some kind of special "ritualistic execution".

In her experience, the second possibility often points to a more dangerous signal—this method of execution usually means that the deceased knew something they shouldn't have known, or betrayed someone they shouldn't have betrayed.

Were any other discoveries made at the crime scene?

"Yes. Technicians extracted skin tissue residue that did not belong to the deceased from under the fingernails of the deceased's right hand, indicating that there had been violent scratching and struggling before death."

In addition, there was a very shallow indentation on the pad of the index finger of the deceased's left hand, which the forensic doctor determined was left by a hard object with a special texture pressing down on it.

The exact texture is still being identified, but common materials such as rope, tape, and fingers have been preliminarily ruled out.

Lu Zheng paused, seemingly choosing his words, "There's another detail—there was half a lipstick mark on the deceased's lips. It wasn't her own lipstick; it belonged to someone else. The color and composition were different."

The forensic doctor said the lipstick mark was left before her death; someone must have kissed her lips forcefully, leaving the mark while she struggled.

Jiang Ruolan raised her head, her gaze sharp:

"Before you died?"

"Yes. The forensic doctor said that based on the location and pressure of the hickeys and lipstick marks, it is likely that the murderer forcibly kissed the victim during the crime—or at some stage of the crime."

It's not yet certain whether it happened before or after her head was wrapped in plastic wrap.

Veteran police officers who have investigated countless murder cases know that among all murder cases, those involving intimate acts such as kissing are the most difficult and dangerous.

This behavior implies that the killer has some kind of strong, distorted emotional projection onto the victim—he may know the victim, may be infatuated with the victim, or may derive some kind of morbid satisfaction from the act of killing itself.

Moreover, such killers often commit crimes again because their motive for killing is not profit or hatred, but an addictive psychological need.

"Retrieve all similar unsolved cases from Yi'an and surrounding counties and cities over the past three years."

The three clues used for screening were: the victim's head was wrapped in plastic wrap, the victim was a woman not sexually assaulted, and there were kissing marks at the scene.

Jiang Ruolan stood up, picked up her police cap, and said, "Let's go to the scene first."

The old town in the east of the city is the most dilapidated area in Nghe An.

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