Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

"The killer climbed up from the drainpipe."

Jiang Ruolan turned to Lu Zheng and said, "The door was locked from the inside, the deceased did not struggle or cry for help, the window was open, there was dirt on the windowsill, and there were climbing marks on the drainpipe. It was a gang of two or more people who committed the crime, and their methods were clean and efficient."

It shares the same characteristics as the murder cases in the north of the city—premeditated, with division of labor, clean and swift, leaving no survivors.

The difference lies in the fact that the murderers in the north of the city used a more brutal and direct method—three people went directly into the dormitory and strangled the target on the spot without any cover-up. It was more like a public execution, to let people know that Ma Guoqing was killed.

The killer in the west of the city attempted to stage a gas poisoning incident. If the landlord hadn't discovered it early, the true cause of the woman's death might have been concealed by gas poisoning. One was a murder intended to be seen, the other was a murder intended to be hidden. The motives behind these two cases are different.

Lu Zheng leaned against the door frame, his brows furrowed: "Establish authority in the north of the city, and silence those in the west."

If the killing in the north of the city was meant to show others on the construction site, then Ma Guoqing must have offended someone he shouldn't have—or he was a key figure in some interest chain, and not eliminating him would be blocking others' way.

The woman in the west of the city may have been an informant or participant. She was killed and the murder was staged as an accident to prevent the police from finding any other clues through her.

The two cases were handled by the same organization, with a clear division of labor but different objectives, demonstrating that this organization's command system is intelligent and capable of developing different solutions based on different goals.

"First, check the identity of the deceased." Jiang Ruolan walked out of the room, stood in the third-floor corridor, took out her phone and called the command center, "Case scene in Qinglong Lane, deceased is female, between twenty-five and thirty years old."

Check the tenant registration information for this building and verify the deceased's name.

Notify the Chengxi Police Station to collect the landlord Ding's mobile phone and retrieve his call records and WeChat transfer records for the past three months.

In addition, physical evidence from the crime scenes in the west and north of the city was sent to the provincial technical center for cross-comparison, especially the footprints collected from the two scenes—the floor of the prefabricated houses at the construction site in the north of the city was cement, while the floor at the west site was old ceramic tiles, and there might be clearer traces on the windowsills and drainpipes, making the collection conditions better.

After hanging up the phone, she looked out at Qinglong Lane through the small open window at the end of the corridor.

Just after midnight on New Year's Eve, a few scattered firecrackers could be heard in the distance, but soon silence returned.

Most of the rental rooms in this alley had their lights on, but the curtains were all drawn tightly—the people living here either had gone back to their hometowns for the Chinese New Year, or were too scared to go out.

News of the two murders had already spread in WeChat groups. People in the rented rooms wrapped themselves up with curtains and locked doors, listening intently to every sound outside in the darkness.

This is the deepest underlying characteristic of the city of Yi An—beneath the surface of peace and order, the fear that has been suppressed for thirty years has never truly disappeared.

They have simply changed their form, lurking behind the sounds of firecrackers every New Year's Eve, waiting for the next crack to appear.

At 3 a.m., two preliminary comparison reports were sent to Jiang Ruolan's mobile phone almost simultaneously.

The first document is a preliminary comparison of footprint samples collected by the technical department from two sites: a prefabricated building in the north of the city and a rental house in Qinglong Lane in the west of the city.

The report shows that two sets of suspicious footprints belonging to victims were extracted from each of the two scenes: one set of footprints from the scene in the north of the city was from size 43 work boots, and the other set was from size 42 sneakers.

The shoe print extracted from the soil near the drainpipe below the window sill at the Chengxi site was a size 42 sneaker. It matched the pattern of the second set of shoe prints at the Chengbei site, and the wear characteristics of the soles were also consistent. The technical department concluded that it was "highly likely from the same pair of shoes".

This means that at least one member of the two groups of perpetrators was present at both crime scenes simultaneously—or at least, he was wearing the same pair of shoes.

The second report was the results of the Criminal Investigation Division's investigation into Ma Guoqing's mobile phone call records.

The number labeled "Old Zhao" was verified to belong to Zhao Baoshan, 49 years old, a local of Yi'an, who is one of the material suppliers for the Binhe Road construction project, mainly supplying sand, gravel and cement.

Zhao Baoshan has two prior convictions for provoking trouble. One was ten years ago when he got into a fight in Yi'an East City for fighting over a building materials business and was administratively detained. The other was three years ago when he was blocked in a warehouse by the other party and his men because of a dispute over overdue payments. The two sides fought each other and both ended up in the police station.

Neither of his previous offenses were major cases, but he had a bad reputation in the Yi An building materials industry—he was accused of defaulting on payments, selling inferior goods as superior ones, and engaging in forced sales. These complaints filled several pages of records at the local industrial and commercial bureau.

During Shen Wangshan's era, Zhao Baoshan was one of the sand and gravel suppliers on the periphery of Fengmao Group. Although he was not a core member of Fengmao, his business depended on Fengmao's engineering projects. After Fengmao collapsed, he changed careers and did other things for a time. Recently, he has returned to the building materials supply industry, taking advantage of the construction of Yian New City.

"Zhao Baoshan called Ma Guoqing on New Year's Eve. The call lasted three minutes. Ma Guoqing died less than an hour after he hung up."

At the meeting of the temporarily formed task force, Jiang Ruolan projected two reports onto the big screen and circled Zhao Baoshan's photo with a laser pointer. "Zhao Baoshan is a material supplier, and Ma Guoqing is the steel reinforcement team leader."

What did a supplier talk about when he called a construction worker on New Year's Eve?

Moreover, not long after the phone call, the three men appeared in the dormitory and swiftly strangled Ma Guoqing to death.

Either Zhao Baoshan confirmed Ma Guoqing's location and condition through this phone call and then passed the information to the perpetrator; or Zhao Baoshan was directly involved in the planning, and might even be among the three people at the scene in the north of the city—Zhao Baoshan is 49 years old, slightly overweight, and a little over 1.7 meters tall, matching the eyewitness description of him as "short."

"Where is Zhao Baoshan now?" Lu Zheng asked.

"The phone is switched off. The last cell tower location was at 8:20 PM near the Yian Long-Distance Bus Station."

The police officers in the technical team projected the trajectory of Zhao Baoshan's mobile phone signal onto the big screen. "According to the timeline, Ma Guoqing died between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm. Zhao Baoshan called him at 4:52 pm."

Afterwards, Zhao Baoshan's mobile phone signal trajectory showed that he moved from the direction of Binhe Road in the north of the city towards the city center, and turned off his phone near the long-distance bus station at 8:20 pm.

This timing coincides with the discovery of the crime scene in the north of the city and the large-scale police response. He either heard rumors, or someone behind him informed him.

"Have you found out the identity of the female victim from Qinglong Lane?"

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