Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

The car drove through the deserted city center.

The streets were almost deserted on New Year's Eve. Occasionally, a few taxis would be parked on the side of the road, with the drivers huddled inside scrolling through their phones, waiting for customers to come out for a second round of dinner after finishing their New Year's Eve feast.

Most of the shops on both sides of the street were closed, with red Spring Festival couplets and the character "福" (good fortune) pasted on their roller shutters, and Chinese knots hanging on the lampposts swaying slightly in the night breeze.

New Year's Eve in Nghe An should be a lively one—families gather around the TV to watch the Spring Festival Gala, children set off fireworks downstairs, and the elderly sit on the sofa dozing off while waiting for the midnight bell.

But for Jiang Ruolan, this night had already been torn to pieces by two emergency calls.

Qinglong Lane is located in the old industrial area in the west of the city. It is an urban village built in the 1980s.

Most of the houses here were built by local residents themselves, some of which have been extended to four or five stories. The distance between the buildings is so narrow that two people walking side by side have to turn sideways.

The alleyway was crisscrossed with electrical wires of varying thicknesses, and the walls were covered with yellowed rental ads and small cards advertising unclogging drains.

Because the rent is cheap, most of the people living here are migrant workers from other places—those who work in nearby factories, those who move goods in the wholesale market, and those who sell barbecue at the night market. All sorts of people come here.

This area is also a long-standing problem for public security in Yi'an. Last year, Jiang Ruolan mentioned twice the fire hazards of shared rental houses and the management of the floating population in Qinglong Lane. However, the rectification work has been slow because the landlords have united to resist softly. They remove the partitions today and put them back on tomorrow, playing guerrilla warfare with the police station.

The rental building where the incident occurred was a four-story self-built house with yellowed white tiles on the exterior walls. The windows above the second floor were fitted with security bars, and the first floor was a motorcycle repair shop with its roller shutter door tightly closed.

The landlord, surnamed Ding, was a thin, elderly man in his sixties. Standing under the streetlight at the alley entrance, the wrinkles on his face appeared particularly deep in the light of the police flashlight.

His wife huddled behind him, wrapped in an old cotton-padded coat, muttering something under her breath.

When Old Man Ding saw Jiang Ruolan striding over, he hurried to greet her, his voice urgent and rapid, carrying the distinctive harsh and fragmented intonation of the local Yi'an accent:

"Officer, it really has nothing to do with me!"

I smelled the gas too strongly, and when no one answered the door after I knocked, I used the spare key to open it.

As soon as I opened the door, I saw the woman lying on the bed. I thought she had fallen asleep due to carbon monoxide poisoning, so I quickly turned off the gas valve and opened the window for ventilation. Then I went closer to try and wake her up, only to notice a red mark on her neck... and my hand was ice cold when I touched it. I was terrified and ran out to call the police.

"What did you move after you went into the room?" Jiang Ruolan asked.

Old Ding counted on his fingers:

"Turn off the gas valve—it's right next to the bed, within easy reach."

I opened the window—the gas smell inside was too strong, I was afraid it would explode.

Then I went to the bedside and patted her twice, that's all. I didn't touch her anything else, really nothing at all.

Was the room door locked when you went in?

"It's locked, inside the lock. I used the spare key."

A locked room, an open gas valve, and ligature marks on a neck.

The killer either has a key or is skilled at picking locks—but a deadbolted door means the killer cannot lock it from the outside when leaving, unless they leave by other means.

Jiang Ruolan looked up and glanced at the layout of the building:

The first floor is a car repair shop, and each of the second to fourth floors is divided into three rental rooms. The room where the incident occurred is the innermost one on the third floor.

The stairwell was narrow, there was no elevator, and there was a shared restroom on each floor. At the end of the third-floor corridor was a small window, which was open, and a cold draft rushed in, causing a single incandescent light bulb in the corridor to sway back and forth.

She entered the room where the crime occurred.

The room was small, less than 20 square meters, containing a bed, a simple wardrobe, a folding table, and a plastic chair—that was all the belongings.

The gas cylinder stood beside the bed, the valve handle still in the position where Old Ding had closed it.

The windows were wide open, and the cold wind blew in, dispersing most of the gas smell. However, a faint, sweet gas smell still lingered in the air, mixed with the damp and musty smell of the rented room, making it unpleasant to smell.

The deceased was lying on her side on the bed. She was a young woman, who looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six years old. She was wearing a pink coral fleece nightgown, and her hair was scattered on the pillow.

Her face showed no signs of pain or contortion, and her expression was relatively calm. However, the ligature mark on her neck was almost identical to Ma Guoqing's—wide and shallow with irregular edges, and the deep purple bruise stood out starkly against her pale skin.

There were some dark red residues under her right fingernails, possibly from scratches she had taken from the assailant during the struggle.

Forensic doctor Lao Zheng has arrived from the north of the city and is conducting a preliminary examination at the bedside.

His movements were quick but not chaotic at all; the bloodstains on his gloves were still wet—they were from the bloodstains on Ma Guoqing's pillowcase in the north of the city.

He carefully lifted the deceased's chin, shone a small flashlight on the details of the ligature marks on her neck, and reported without looking up: "The deceased was a woman, between twenty-five and thirty years old."

The preliminary cause of death was also determined to be mechanical asphyxiation, and the ligature marks on the neck were highly consistent with those of the deceased in the north of the city.

The marks are three to four centimeters wide, with a rough texture, and match the characteristics of towel-like fabrics.

The time of death is estimated to be between 6 and 7 p.m. tonight, which highly overlaps with the time window for death in the north of the city.

There were no defensive wounds on the deceased's body, but there were scratches under his fingernails. However, these residues should have indicated that the deceased grabbed something during the asphyxiation process—possibly the assailant's clothes or gloves, but the force was insufficient to form an effective defensive wound.

In other words, her resistance was very weak, and the killer controlled and strangled her very quickly.

In addition, the deceased had minor damage to the mucous membrane inside his lips, and a small bruise on the skin of his upper lip in the corresponding location—this was caused by forcefully covering his mouth and nose.

The assailant likely first covered her mouth and nose with a towel to prevent her from calling for help, while simultaneously restraining her hands, and then strangled her with another towel. It would have taken two people working together to do it so cleanly and efficiently.

"The gas valve was turned on by the murderer."

Jiang Ruolan squatted down to examine the valve handle of the gas cylinder carefully. There was a small, barely noticeable fingerprint mark on the metal surface of the valve—but it looked like a fabric indentation left when someone wrapped the handle with cloth and turned it, rather than a fingerprint left by direct hand contact.

She stood up, walked to the open window, and shone her flashlight outside.

Outside the third-floor window was a narrow fire lane, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, filled with all sorts of odds and ends—abandoned bicycles, empty cardboard boxes, and construction waste.

Below the windowsill is a thick drainpipe with obvious signs of climbing. A large piece of rust has been scraped off, revealing the silver-gray metal underneath.

There was a small patch of fresh soil on the edge of the windowsill. It had snowed in Yi'an these past few days, so the soil was wet and stuck to the cement windowsill, not yet completely dry.

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