Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

Jiang Ruolan placed the water glass she was holding on the windowsill in the corridor, turned around and looked at Lu Zheng:

"His pelvis was struck hard by a blunt object, but he survived. He spent a year or two recovering from the injury, but was eventually killed by the blunt object."

Where was she during those one or two years? Who took care of her? Why didn't she run away? Why didn't she call the police?

These questions have no answers, but they all point in the same direction—the victim was not killed randomly; she had some kind of long-term, twisted relationship with the killer.

The killer inflicted severe violence on her, then allowed her to live, and may even have personally cared for her recovery.

This kind of relationship cannot be established between strangers; the murderer must be someone she knows, or even someone close to her.

Two years later, the same person ended her life in the same way.

"Let the forensic team prioritize collecting DNA from these two sets of remains for comparison. They may not be in the missing persons database, but if their families are also looking for them, we should give them an answer."

After saying this, Jiang Ruolan picked up the water glass on the windowsill again, unscrewed the cap, drank the last sip of the now-cold boiled water, and then walked towards the construction site in the east of the city.

Night had completely fallen, and the demolition site in the east of the city was brightly lit.

The searchlights cast pale beams of light onto the dark gray ruins, and the roar of excavators broke the deathly silence that the area should have been experiencing at night. The sounds of tracks crushing gravel and metal buckets cutting into the soil rose and fell in waves.

Search dogs ran back and forth along the edge of the tunnel, occasionally stopping to bark urgently. Technicians would then gather around and place red marker flags at the locations where the dogs were alerting the area.

These flags fluttered in the night wind, looking from a distance like a string of alarming warning lights.

Song Ya was found the following afternoon.

The person who found her wasn't the special task force; it was a side lead that Lu Zheng stumbled upon while investigating the base station location data of the mysterious phone number mentioned in Sun Zhengyang's confession.

The number last showed active signal five years ago near Qinglong River in western Yi'an City, after which it went silent, neither being cancelled, transferred to another network, nor generating any further call records.

Lu Zheng followed the registration information of this number and found that although it was registered with a fake ID, a bank card appeared in the payment record - a savings card of Yi'an Local Rural Commercial Bank, and the account holder was named Song Zhigang.

The name initially went unnoticed until he entered "Song Zhigang" into the household registration system, and the related information that popped up on the screen stunned him:

Song Zhigang, male, 52 years old, is from Qingshipu Village, Shiqiao County, Yi'an City. In the emergency contact section, he filled in "Song Ya", and the relationship was "sibling".

Bluestone paving.

These three words were like a key, inserted into the heavy iron door in the hearts of everyone in the task force.

Song Zhigang runs a small chicken farm in Qingshipu Village. It's not a large operation, with only a few hundred chickens, located next to a poplar grove at the west end of the village.

When the task force arrived, it was just getting dark, and the chicken farm was filled with a stuffy, hot air mixed with the sour smell of chicken manure and feed.

The threshing ground was a row of low, red brick bungalows with asbestos tile roofs, and several strings of dried corn cobs hung under the eaves.

Inside the henhouse, hundreds of chickens clucked restlessly in the darkness. A few low-wattage incandescent bulbs cast long, crooked shadows on the mottled wall.

Lu Zheng led his men to search all three bungalows in the chicken farm—the main room, the feed room, and Song Zhigang's own bedroom.

The three rooms were filled with bags of chicken feed and other miscellaneous items, and the sour smell of chicken manure permeated the air.

Song Zhigang stood in the center of the main room, his thin frame wrapped in an old cotton-padded jacket covered in chicken feathers. His face was rough and red from the mountain wind, and his eyes held a dullness and alertness unique to people who had lived alone for a long time.

When asked about Song Ya's whereabouts, his answer was exactly the same as a year ago:

My sister went out to work and hasn't come back for several years.

His tone was steady, his eyes unwavering, as if he were reciting a line he had practiced countless times.

But this time, Lu Zheng was not fooled by those words.

He noticed a barely noticeable crack at the base of the wall on the inner side of the main room—not a brick joint, but a crack between the cement floor and the wall, with signs of being pried open at the edges.

He gestured to the two police officers to move the chicken feed bags that were against the wall.

Upon seeing this scene, Song Zhigang's expression changed for the first time. His wooden, resigned calm cracked, revealing a panic beneath.

He rushed forward to try to stop them, but two police officers grabbed his arms and pinned him against the wall, making incoherent, hoarse noises.

After the feed bags were moved aside, a wooden board cover about 80 centimeters square was revealed at the base of the wall.

Lifting the wooden plank reveals a narrow staircase, just wide enough for one person to pass sideways, leading down to a cellar.

The cellar entrance was narrow, but the inside was surprisingly spacious—about seven or eight square meters, with just enough height for an adult to stand up straight.

The beam of the flashlight swept in and illuminated a simple wooden bed in the corner. The bed was covered with a yellowed old cotton quilt, and a plastic water bottle and a half-eaten bag of biscuits were placed on the bedside table.

A person is sitting on the bed.

That's a woman.

His hair was dry, yellow, and sparse, sticking messily to both sides of his face. His skin was almost transparently pale from years of not seeing the sun. His cheekbones were high and prominent, and his eye sockets were deep. His clothes were old but clean—unnaturally clean, as if he was deliberately maintaining the last shred of dignity in this dark and gloomy place.

A thin iron chain was tied around her left wrist, with the other end fixed to an iron ring on the wall. The chain was just long enough for her to move within two steps around the bed, not enough to reach the steps or the only vent on the wall.

Lu Zheng squatted down, trying to make his voice sound steady: "Are you Song Ya?"

The woman looked up, and the light from the flashlight made her squint.

She looked at the police officers in front of her, her lips moved, and she uttered a hoarse voice, as if she hadn't used her voice in a long time: "I am."

Then she raised her right hand and wiped the dust off her face with her sleeve. The action was surprisingly natural, like some kind of internalized habit that made her subconsciously want to keep herself clean when facing outsiders, even after being locked up in a dark cellar for several years.

Her eyes held neither panic nor elation, only a numb calmness, the kind that comes from someone who has been imprisoned for too long.

He glanced at Lu Zheng for a few seconds, then shifted his gaze to Song Zhigang, who was pinned against the wall, his tone as indifferent as if he were talking about someone unrelated to him:

"You've finally arrived. I've lived here for almost six years."

Song Ya was sent to Yi'an City People's Hospital for a comprehensive examination.

The statement she made in the hospital was later described by Lu Zheng as "the most chilling confession he had ever heard in his eight years of criminal investigation."

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