Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

"Don't you know what crime she's referring to?"

Jiang Ruolan looked into his eyes. "Then why did you help him dispose of the body?"

Zhu Minghai's Adam's apple bobbed, and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, dripping onto the metal surface of the interrogation table and splashing out a small water stain.

His voice lowered even further:

"Because Zhou Haipeng said I was involved in arranging for Fang Zhiqing to come out, if he gets arrested, I won't be able to escape either."

I was scared. I was so scared. He said if I helped him this once, he wouldn't bother me again.

I...I used the shop's trolley to help her...help her move the body to that unfinished building. The rest—the plastic bags, the lipstick stains—were all done by Zhou Haipeng himself.

He sent me away, leaving me downstairs to keep watch. I didn't see him do anything to Fang Zhiqing, I really didn't see it. But I knew it was him, it must have been him.

Where is Zhou Haipeng?

"I don't know, I really don't know. I haven't seen him since that incident three years ago."

He gave me Fang Zhiqing's phone and told me to get rid of it. I was too scared to throw it away, so I kept it hidden in my bedside table, and I had nightmares every night.

Zhu Minghai raised his head, his eyes red-rimmed, his voice carrying the strain of a breakdown caused by three years of suppressed fear and guilt:

"I've regretted it every day for the past three years. After seeing the news about Su Nian, I knew it was him who had attacked me again. I wanted to call the police, but I was afraid."

I'm afraid I can't explain it clearly. Zhou Haipeng forced me to get that credit card too—he said Fang Zhiqing owed him money before she died, and he wanted me to pay it back.

I had no choice but to give Fang Zhiqing my credit card so she could use it herself. But I don't know why she wrote the card number on a sticky note.

Jiang Ruolan and Lu Zheng exchanged a glance.

While Zhu Minghai's confession still needs verification—his fear of Zhou Haipeng may be genuine—his involvement in disposing of the body itself constitutes a crime—it at least clarifies one thing:

Zhou Haipeng was the direct perpetrator in Fang Zhiqing's case, while Ding Hai and Zhu Minghai were insiders and participants.

More importantly, Zhu Minghai mentioned a detail he still doesn't know the answer to—Fang Zhiqing said Zhou Haipeng was committing "crimes," and it was this statement that led to her death.

What does "crime" refer to? It's not about having affairs; it's much more serious than that.

The secret that could drive Zhou Haipeng to murder must be something that, if exposed, would come at a huge cost to him.

After leaving the interrogation room, Jiang Ruolan stood in the corridor and called Zhou Pei, relaying Zhu Minghai's confession to him.

After listening, Zhou Pei remained silent for a few seconds, then said:

"I also have some new developments on my end. The technical department has recovered the cloud backup data from Ding Hai's switched-off phone."

There was an encrypted chat log inside, a conversation between him and someone called "Old Third".

"Old Three" is the third person we saw in the photos of the mining area in Guizhou. His real identity has finally been found out—his real name is Wei Xiaojun, a native of Chongqing, with prior convictions for robbery and intentional assault.

The three people discussed "getting the goods" and "shipping" in their chat history, and repeatedly mentioned a person with the code name "Sister Hua." I suspect that the three of them are working together in the drug trade.

"The 'crime' that Fang Zhiqing mentioned may be drugs."

Jiang Ruolan tightened her grip on her phone. "She discovered that Zhou Haipeng was dealing drugs, so Zhou Haipeng had to kill her to silence her."

Ding Hai and Wei Xiaojun—the two people who acted as his protective shield—helped him cover up the matter.

"What about Su Nian? What's her connection to drugs?"

Jiang Ruolan leaned against the wall of the corridor and rubbed her throbbing temples.

Su Nian is an excellent female college student with a clean social circle, and she should have no connection with drugs.

But she met "Ahai"—based on current clues, the "Ahai" she mentioned is likely Ding Hai, or it could be Zhou Haipeng or Wei Xiaojun impersonating Ding Hai to contact her.

If these three individuals form a well-organized drug trafficking group, with each person playing a different role, then they might collectively use the codename "Ah Hai" to approach different female targets.

"Su Nian may not have done anything."

Jiang Ruolan said slowly, "Her only 'mistake' was meeting someone she shouldn't have met and discovering things she shouldn't have discovered. Just like Fang Zhiqing."

Zhou Pei was silent for a moment on the other end of the phone, then said:

"Ruolan, if this judgment is correct, then the nature of this case has changed—from a serial murder case to a drug crime combined with a serial murder case."

Su Nian may just be an "accident" on the periphery of this drug trafficking gang. They killed her not because of disputes over the drug deal itself, but because she, as an innocent outsider, accidentally touched upon their secrets.

This relates to things a female college student might come into contact with—for example, she discovers that her "boyfriend" is doing some shady business, or she accidentally sees something she shouldn't have seen.

I have applied to the department to formally merge the two cases for investigation, with you serving as the head of the special task force to provide unified command.

"Approved."

After hanging up the phone, Jiang Ruolan returned to the conference room and shared the latest situation with the task force.

The atmosphere in the meeting room became unusually tense.

Everyone realized that they were no longer facing just one or two psychopathic killers, but a small criminal group whose core business was drug trafficking and whose cover was murder.

The members of this small group grew up together and had complex relationships of interest and emotional ties. They used false identities and faces to move between mining areas across the country, spreading their drug network to multiple provinces.

Zhou Haipeng and Wei Xiaojun are still at large.

Only Ding Hai's whereabouts are relatively clear—he is still in Yi'an, and the lipstick he bought is the best proof.

Ding Hai was cornered in that abandoned tenement building in the east of the city.

The task force located his cell phone signal through the purchase record of that lipstick, and then traced the signal trajectory backwards, discovering that he had never left Yi'an after Su Nian was killed.

He changed three SIM cards and used them in rotation, turning off his phone after no more than ten minutes each time. He slept in different abandoned buildings at night—a tenement building in the east of the city, an unfinished shopping mall in the north of the city, and a row of bungalows behind the train station that were slated for demolition. Like a mouse darting through the cracks of the city, he relied on his familiarity with the city to evade capture.

The night he was arrested, a torrential downpour occurred in Yi'an.

The rain started pouring down from dusk and showed no sign of stopping late into the night. The water on the streets was ankle-deep, and a pungent, fishy stench wafted from the sewers.

The task force received a tip that Ding Hai was hiding that night in the tenement building in the east of the city where Su Nian was murdered—he had returned to where he started.

No one knows why he wanted to go back. Maybe it was some kind of twisted ritual, or maybe he just felt that the place had been searched by the police and had become the safest blind spot.

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