Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

"This year, the investigation into Fang Zhiqing's case was reopened, and the Inspectorate interviewed me. Only then did I realize that many things could no longer be hidden."

After my punishment was handed down, I was transferred from the Criminal Investigation Department to the General Affairs Department. Everyone thought I was punished because of Fang Zhiqing's case, but only I knew that the real time bomb was not Fang Zhiqing, but Song Ya.

If she's still alive, she'll know what I did—or didn't do—before and after she went missing. If she's dead, her death will be brought to light sooner or later, and I'll be the first suspect.

Sun Zhengyang raised his head, his eyes bloodshot. "This morning I heard that skeletal remains had been unearthed at the construction site in the east of the city, so I rushed over. I wanted to see if it was her who was dug out."

"Then what did you see?" Jiang Ruolan asked.

"It wasn't her."

Sun Zhengyang's voice carried a complex emotion, as if he was both relieved and plunged into deeper fear. "The work ID in the shroud belongs to Lin Xiaomei, not Song Ya."

The deceased's height and build did not match Song Ya's—Song Ya was tall, over 1.7 meters, while the remains were only about 1.6 meters tall.

This means that there is more than one body buried at the construction site in the east of the city. Lin Xiaomei's work ID is next to another dead body, and Song Ya may still be buried underneath and has not been dug out.

Or perhaps Song Ya never died at all; she escaped Feng Mao's attempt to silence her and is hiding somewhere in this world, watching us all. Either way, I'm finished.

Jiang Ruolan remained silent for a long time.

She mentally compared Sun Zhengyang's confession with the evidence she already had.

The two sets of remains found at the construction site in the east of the city were as follows: the first set of remains was wrapped in an old cotton quilt, with Lin Xiaomei's work ID next to her; the second set of remains was wrapped in an old bed sheet, on which was a row of handwritten numbers.

After being restored by spectral imaging, the numbers were confirmed to be Song Ya's phone number.

Sun Zhengyang said that Song Ya might have been silenced, and now her phone number has appeared on the shroud—although the deceased is not Song Ya herself, the burial time of these two remains highly coincides with the timeline of Song Ya's disappearance.

If the second set of remains is not Song Ya's either, then where is Song Ya?

Is writing her phone number on the bed sheet a distress signal, or is someone using this method to send a message to the outside world—Song Ya is next?

The inference that Sun Zhengyang wrote his phone number on the bed sheet is illogical; his one-way communication with Song Ya means he didn't need to record her information in this way at all.

So that phone number wasn't written by Sun Zhengyang, it was written by the murderer.

The murderer knew Song Ya and knew that there was some connection between Song Ya and the women buried in the construction site. The murderer left Song Ya's phone number on the shroud, just like he left Lin Xiaomei's work ID card—he wanted to connect all the evidence related to Feng Mao and show it to the person who found the body.

"Sun Zhengyang".

Jiang Ruolan leaned forward slightly, looking directly at him. "You said you investigated the man who answered Song Ya's call, and that the phone number's owner was a fake. Did you check that number's call history?"

"I checked. But that was five years ago. Back then, call records were only kept for six months and were automatically overwritten after that. By the time I found it, the expiration date had already passed."

Do you remember the number?

Sun Zhengyang paused for a moment, then slowly recited a string of numbers.

Jiang Ruolan memorized the numbers, stood up, and walked out.

The moment she pushed open the interrogation room door, she glanced back at Sun Zhengyang.

The former veteran detective sat in the interrogation chair with his head down, his two handcuffed hands resting flat on the table. His fingers slowly and repeatedly curled and straightened, as if trying to grasp something, but he couldn't grasp anything.

"You've been a policeman for twenty-four years. You know better than anyone that silence won't make secrets disappear; it will only let them rot in the ground, buried deeper and deeper, until one day they're dug up."

The last thing you can do is to explain every detail you know.

It's not about getting a reduced sentence—you've already reached the end of your sentence—it's about giving a name to the women still buried under the construction site.

After saying this, Jiang Ruolan pushed open the door and walked out.

In the corridor, Zhou Pei and Lu Zheng had already seen the entire process on the monitor screen.

Zhou Pei's face was grim, while Lu Zheng wore a complex expression that was hard to decipher, a mixture of anger and regret.

A veteran detective with over twenty years of experience ultimately falls not at the hands of criminals, but at his own silent mistakes that lead to a series of errors—an ending more unsettling than any bloody crime scene.

"Check the number he mentioned immediately."

Although the base station location data from five years ago is outdated, the operator's call detail database has a long-term backup, which can be retrieved as long as the number is known.

Jiang Ruolan wrote down the string of numbers Sun Zhengyang had given her on a sticky note and handed it to Lu Zheng. "I need all the contacts for this number, all the call times, and all the cell tower locations."

In addition, we need to re-examine Song Ya's movements over the three months surrounding her disappearance—where she last appeared, who she spoke to, and whether she left any written or electronic messages.

Lu Zheng took the note and turned to leave, but Jiang Ruolan called him back:

"Wait a minute. Has the excavation area at the construction site in the east of the city been expanded?"

"It's being expanded. Old Zheng said that the ground-penetrating radar detected two more abnormal signals at a depth of three to four meters in the ground."

It's already dark, and the lighting for the construction machinery is insufficient, so the excavation progress may be slower.

But the search dogs are already in place; if there are indeed bodies below, they will detect them before radar does.

Lu Zheng paused for a moment, a hint of hesitation on his face. "Director Jiang, Old Zheng asked me to tell you something—he discovered something very unusual while cleaning the pelvis of the second set of remains."

The remains showed an old, healed fracture on the pubic symphysis. The shape of the fracture line and the degree of healing indicated that she had suffered a severe pelvic injury before her death, most likely caused by a blunt force trauma.

But this was not a fatal injury—the fracture healed very well, indicating that she lived for at least another year or two after that injury.

The truly fatal injury was to the back of the head, and like the first set of remains, it was a comminuted fracture of the skull caused by multiple blunt force trauma.

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