Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

According to Mr. Zheng, the preliminary assessment is that the time of death was between three and five years ago. The victim was female, slightly shorter, and her skull also showed obvious signs of blunt force trauma.

The body was wrapped in an old bed sheet, a light blue checkered pattern, the kind that's very common, but there was a row of handwritten numbers along the edge of the sheet.

The technician has already scanned the row of numbers with a multispectral imager, and the image is being enhanced on the computer.

Jiang Ruolan leaned closer to the technician's computer screen and saw that the row of numbers was gradually becoming clearer under spectral imaging—it was a mobile phone number.

The eleven-digit number has some of the middle digits that have been badly eroded by the soil, but the first and last digits are still recognizable.

She immediately asked Lu Zheng to check who owned the number. A few minutes later, Lu Zheng ran back with a strange expression:

"The phone number is registered in Yi'an, and the owner is a woman named Song Ya."

"Song Ya?"

Jiang Ruolan repeated the name, her mind racing. "Isn't she the TV host from a year ago? Zhou Wenxuan's girlfriend?"

"Yes, that's her. During the Shen Wangshan case, Zhou Wenxuan was preparing to escape by boat from the North City Wharf, and the woman next to him was Song Ya. At the time, she was administratively detained for fifteen days for allegedly harboring a criminal, but was later released because there was no direct evidence to prove that she participated in Zhou Wenxuan's criminal activities. After that, she disappeared from Yi'an—she quit her job at the TV station, moved, and changed her phone number."

Lu Zheng pulled up Song Ya's photo on his phone and handed it to Jiang Ruolan.

Jiang Ruolan took the phone and looked at the young woman's ID photo on the screen.

Song Ya, a former evening news anchor for Yi'an TV, was pinned to the ground by special police at the Chengbei Wharf more than a year ago, while Zhou Wenxuan was being handcuffed next to her.

Zhou Wenxuan was later sentenced to seventeen years in prison. Song Ya was released after her administrative detention period ended because she was a first-time offender and had been passively involved.

But after that, she completely disappeared from the public eye.

Now, her phone number appears on the shroud of an unidentified corpse buried under the foundation in the east of the city, alongside a skeleton that had been dead for at least three years.

Jiang Ruolan returned the phone to Lu Zheng and turned to look at the two remains lying side by side in the tunnel.

Forensic experts and technicians continued to expand the excavation area, and ground-penetrating radar detected suspicious cavities at deeper levels.

A terrifying possibility was forming in her mind—there might be more than just these two corpses beneath this demolition zone in the east of the city.

Lin Xiaomei's work ID, Song Ya's phone number, the same blunt force trauma to death, the same cotton and bed sheet used to wrap the body—these details, pieced together, point to a fact she is unwilling to face but has to: there may be more undiscovered secrets buried underground in Yi'an.

Sun Zhengyang, the detective who had hastily closed the case in Fang Zhiqing's case, appeared at the scene the moment the remains were discovered in the east of the city.

What is he so nervous about? What is he afraid of? What is his connection with these women buried under the foundation?

Jiang Ruolan took out her phone, walked to a relatively quiet spot by the tunnel, and dialed Zhou Pei's number:

"Zhou Pei, could you help me check Sun Zhengyang's case records from his time in Xinzhou? Not just Fang Zhiqing's case, but all the missing women cases, murder cases, and unsolved cases he handled, pull them all out."

Additionally, investigate his personal social network—his classmates, fellow villagers, family members—to see if anyone has had any dealings with the Fengmao Group.

Zhou Pei's voice came from the other end of the phone, sounding more serious than she had expected:

"Ruolan, there's no need to check anymore. When you asked me to retrieve the files, I just glanced at Sun Zhengyang's personnel information. His father's name is Sun Baotian, and he was the director of the Xinzhou Municipal Construction Committee before he retired."

In 2014, the bidding for the Yi'an New City Administrative Center project ultimately went to Fengmao Group. The project's supervising authority was the Xinzhou Municipal Construction Commission. Sun Baotian was the head of the Xinzhou Municipal Construction Commission at the time.

There was a few seconds of silence on the phone.

Jiang Ruolan stood at the edge of the tunnel, the cold wind blowing from the open ground of the demolition site, making the hem of her coat flutter.

She looked up at the gray sky and then said:

"I understand. Have the provincial inspectors take Sun Zhengyang into custody immediately and prevent him from leaving Yi'an."

"It's already being done."

Zhou Pei said, "Zhao Rui took people to his hotel. In addition, I found out that the developer of this demolition site in the east of the city is Fengmao Real Estate. The original name of this project was 'Fengmao New City'. After Shen Wangshan was arrested, the province took back the project and re-auctioned it. The current developer is a provincial construction company."

The foundation pit at the crime scene was dug during Shen Wangshan's era. This means that the person who buried those two bodies five years ago, doing this on Shen Wangshan's construction site, was most likely from Fengmao—or at least had free access to Fengmao's construction site.

Jiang Ruolan hung up the phone, turned around, and looked at the two skeletons wrapped in quilts and sheets in the tunnel, as well as the yellowed work ID next to them.

The fact that Lin Xiaomei's work ID is here means that her killer—or at least someone who knew about it—is still alive five years later, still committing crimes, and still stuffing new bodies into the ground in Yi'an.

Tang Yuanqing and Shen Wangshan are already dead. The deaths of these two women need to be answered by someone who is alive and can explain the situation clearly.

Sun Zhengyang sat in the interrogation chair in the same posture as when he was interviewed by the Provincial Department of Supervision a year ago—his back was straight, his hands were folded on the table, his expression was calm, and his eyes were unwavering.

At forty-seven, he was very well-maintained, with his hair neatly combed, his chin clean-shaven, and his dark blue jacket zipped up to his chest, revealing a neatly ironed shirt collar underneath.

If you ignore the cold handcuffs on his wrists, he looks more like a criminal investigation expert attending a business seminar than an interrogation subject whose personal freedom is restricted.

But Jiang Ruolan noticed a subtle twitching in the corner of his eye—the muscle under his left eye would twitch involuntarily every few seconds, very frequently and with a very small amplitude, which would not be noticed at all unless one was deliberately observing.

She stood in front of the one-way glass outside the interrogation room for a long time, taking in all of Sun Zhengyang's micro-expressions, before pushing the door open and going in.

There were only her and Sun Zhengyang in the interrogation room.

Two colleagues from the Provincial Department's Inspection Division were watching the live feed via surveillance in the next room, as were Zhou Pei and Lu Zheng.

Jiang Ruolan sat down opposite Sun Zhengyang. She didn't bring any case files or notebooks, only a glass of water.

She placed the water glass on the table, unscrewed the cap, took a sip, then leaned back in her chair and began to speak in a tone as if chatting with an old acquaintance.

"Deputy Director Sun, you came all the way from the provincial capital to Yi'an for a vacation. What's so interesting about that demolition site in the east of the city?"

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