Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

This statement was not taken in the interrogation room—Song Ya's physical condition did not allow for long-distance transport. The doctor said that she had been lacking sunlight and exercise for a long time, was severely malnourished, and had osteoporosis to the point that she could fracture with the slightest touch. She needed to be observed in the hospital for at least a week.

The task force set up a video camera in the ward, and Jiang Ruolan sat by the bedside, listening to the woman who had been imprisoned for nearly six years tell her story word by word for an hour and a half.

Song Ya said that she was never just a host from the beginning.

She was born in Qingshipu Village, Shiqiao County. Her family was so poor that they couldn't even afford her high school tuition.

At that time, Song Zhigang was already working in Yi'an, carrying bricks on construction sites. He sent most of his monthly earnings back home to support her studies. He lived in a makeshift shed on the construction site, and even when his hands and feet were frostbitten and rotting in the winter, he refused to spend money on medicine.

The year she was admitted to university, Song Zhigang used all his savings and borrowed more than 10,000 yuan from his coworkers to send her to the gates of New Jersey University.

After graduating, she joined Yi'an TV Station and worked her way up from a junior reporter to an evening news anchor. Meanwhile, Song Zhigang returned to Qingshipu and used the wages she had saved from her first two years at the TV station to open a chicken farm.

Her relationship with her brother was much deeper than that of ordinary siblings—she was raised by her brother single-handedly, and after their parents passed away at a young age, Song Zhigang was her only relative in the world.

Her feelings for him included gratitude, guilt, and an unconditional trust that she herself couldn't quite explain, a trust that bordered on faith.

Her initial intention in approaching Zhou Wenxuan was indeed as Zhou Pei had previously speculated—to gather information for Fengmao's use in exchange for a living space in Yi'an.

But what she didn't tell Sun Zhengyang was that she was also gathering information for herself at the same time.

She secretly kept copies of the detailed accounts, the transfer of benefits between Shen Wangshan and Gu Changhe, and the details of every bribe payment handled by Zhou Wenxuan.

She selectively revealed some information to Sun Zhengyang, hoping to use his position as deputy head of the criminal investigation team to balance Feng Mao's control over her.

But she went too far.

In 2018, Zhou Wenxuan discovered that she was secretly recording Fengmao's internal meetings.

"He showed me the surveillance footage."

Song Ya leaned against the hospital bed, her voice soft, her gaze falling on her hands, which were so thin they were practically just bones. "It was in a private room on the top floor of the Golden Coast Club."

He said he originally planned to have me buried, but he gave me a choice—either die or help him do one last thing.

He said that Fengmao had two "troubles" already buried at the construction site in the east of the city, and a third "trouble" that was being dealt with.

He needs someone who has absolutely no connection to Fengmao to provide an alibi.

He asked me to go to the construction site under the name of the TV station to do an interview on the topic of "The Spirit of the New City Builders". I just needed to shoot a few shots at the entrance of the construction site and shake hands with the project manager.

He said he would let me go if I did this.

Jiang Ruolan asked, "Did you do it?"

"I did it." Song Ya closed her eyes, her eyelashes trembling slightly. "On November 16, 2018, I took the station's cameraman to the construction site in the east of the city and filmed a three-minute news clip."

That footage was later broadcast on the evening news, with the date clearly stated. In the footage, I was standing at the entrance of the construction site, with tower cranes and foundation pits under construction behind me.

Zhou Wenxuan's purpose was simple—if the body in that foundation pit were ever discovered in the future, he could use this news footage to prove that during the time period presumed by the forensic doctor, normal construction activities were taking place on that construction site, and there were no abnormalities.

And I am his witness in time.

The ward remained quiet for a long time.

Looking at the woman in front of her, Jiang Ruolan recalled the two skeletons with their skulls shattered by blunt force in the foundation pit in the east of the city, as well as the yellowed work ID in the shroud and the row of handwritten numbers on the bed sheet.

On November 16, 2018, Song Ya stood beside the foundation pit, smiling at the camera lens, while two murdered women were buried in the concrete foundation less than three meters deep beneath her feet.

Did she know about it? If she didn't know, why did Zhou Wenxuan ask her to provide this "alibi"? If she did know, how did she feel standing on that ground at the time?

"Did you know at the time that there were corpses buried beneath your feet?" Jiang Ruolan asked this question.

Song Ya opened her eyes and looked directly at Jiang Ruolan without flinching.

Her voice was still soft, but every word was clear: "I know. Zhou Wenxuan showed me the photos."

He said the two people were named Chen Xiufang and Wu Guilan, and they were both migrant workers from other places who worked in Yi'an and cooked on the construction site.

They inadvertently saw something they shouldn't have seen—the rare earth tailings that Fengmao had smuggled from the Chenjiagou mining area were mixed into building materials and used in the foundations of several buildings under construction in the east of the city.

They took photos, intending to report them to the Environmental Protection Bureau. Zhou Wenxuan instructed Ren Pengfei to handle the matter.

One of the people who dealt with it was from our village—Tang Yuanqing.

Jiang Ruolan's heart suddenly clenched.

Tang Yuanqing, it's Tang Yuanqing again.

The fugitive who committed suicide by shooting himself in the chicken farm behind Shiqiao had more lives on his hands than the task force had already confirmed.

During Shen Wangshan's era, he specialized in handling "dirty work," from Meng Zhaoyang to Liu Zhenguo and He Dayong, from Lin Xiaomei to Xu Guangfa, and then to Chen Xiufang and Wu Guilan at the Chengdong construction site—the murder cases he handled spanned at least ten years, covering every criminal area of ​​the Fengmao Group in Yi'an.

When he was being rounded up, this man chose to end his own life, taking all the unspoken secrets and the victims who might still be buried elsewhere with him to his grave.

"You provided him with an alibi. After it was all done, how did Zhou Wenxuan 'let you off the hook'?" Jiang Ruolan's voice turned cold.

Song Ya's lips curved slightly, but it wasn't a smile; it was more like an instinctive reaction to the absurdity of fate.

She said, "He let me go—he didn't kill me. But he had Song Zhigang lock me up."

He said he knew about the relationship between my brother and me, and that as long as I disappeared from this world, my brother could continue raising his chickens peacefully without anyone bothering him.

If I don't obey, Song Zhigang will become the third person buried in the foundation in the east of the city.

So my brother isn't one of Zhou Wenxuan's people; he was implicated because of me.

He locked me in the cellar not to harm me, but because if he hadn't, we would both have died.

Jiang Ruolan remained silent for a long time.

Looking at Song Ya's pale face, stripped of all its luster by years of imprisonment, she felt a complex mix of emotions, so complex that she herself could hardly discern them.

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