Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

Jiang Ruolan started the SUV and drove out of the municipal bureau compound.

As the streets gradually filled with people on the first day of the Lunar New Year, children in new clothes set off firecrackers by the roadside, and red lanterns in front of shops swayed gently in the morning breeze. The whole city was immersed in the festive atmosphere of the New Year, completely unaware that in the past night, the lives of three people had been ended in the same way.

Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel, her mind racing through three clues: Ma Guoqing, the foreman of the steelworkers at the construction site, whom Zhao Baoshan had called, and whose bank account balance had been checked after his death; Yu Xiaomei, a KTV waitress, who had spoken to Zhao Baoshan once on the phone, and who had a scarf made of fibers supplied by Cui Changhe's company around her neck; and an unidentified male corpse in the east of the city, whose identity was yet to be determined, located in a demolition building in the old city district.

What do these three people have in common? Do they know the same person? Are they involved in the same event? Or do they possess the same secret?

The crime scene in the old city area of ​​the east side of the city was a four-story tenement building.

This building is only two streets away from the old tenement building where Su Nian was murdered half a year ago. Both are old residential buildings that have been included in the demolition area. Most of the residents have moved out, leaving only a few holdouts.

The walls of the stairwell were badly peeling, the handrails were covered in dust, and the steps were littered with broken glass and exposed red brick fragments.

The room where the incident occurred was on the second floor. The door lock was intact, the window was closed, and there were obvious signs of a struggle in the room—a folding table was overturned on the floor, a plastic chair had a broken leg, there was a bloodstain on the wall, and several pieces of broken glass were scattered on the floor.

This is completely different from the scenes in the north and west of the city—those scenes were clean and tidy, with almost no signs of struggle, and the victims were subdued without any warning or with only slight resistance. But here, a fierce fight had taken place.

The deceased was lying on the ground. He was a man in his forties, wearing a dark blue down jacket with the collar torn open, revealing a ligature mark on his neck that was identical to the marks in the previous two murder cases.

But unlike the previous two cases, he had bruises on his face, blood at the corner of his mouth, and his right hand was clenched into a fist with abrasions and bloodstains on it—he had been in a fight, a fight that had been incredibly dangerous.

The forensic assistant squatted down next to the body to conduct a preliminary examination. When he turned the deceased's right hand over, he found something clutched in his tightly clenched fist.

The assistant carefully pried open the stiff fingers and took out an irregular fragment from the palm—a small piece of dark blue plastic with unevenly broken edges, as if it had been forcefully broken off from something.

There is a shallow, curved indentation on the inside of the fragment, which appears to be a remnant of some kind of button or clip.

"Director Jiang, the deceased had an ID card on him." The forensic assistant took a wallet from the inside pocket of the deceased's down jacket, inside which was an ID card. The name on the ID card was—Zhao Baoshan.

Jiang Ruolan took the ID card and stared at the photo on it for several seconds.

The man in the photo is slightly overweight, with a round face and narrow eyes, which matches the physical characteristics of the "short" man described by witnesses at the construction site in the north of the city.

She handed her ID card to Lu Zheng, who had just walked to the door, her voice carrying an extreme coldness: "Zhao Baoshan has been found."

Lu Zheng took the ID card, glanced at it, then looked up at the corpse on the ground with bruises on its face and blood at the corner of its mouth. His brows furrowed into a knot: "Something's not right."

Zhao Baoshan called Ma Guoqing. Zhao Baoshan was spotted at the scene in the north of the city. Zhao Baoshan fled to avoid punishment. We chased him all night, thinking that he was the murderer or at least a core member involved in the planning.

Now he's dead, killed in the same way as the previous two victims. He's not the murderer; he's a victim too.

"Let's re-examine the timeline. At 4:52 PM on New Year's Eve, Zhao Baoshan called Ma Guoqing. Ma Guoqing's time of death was between 5:30 and 6:30 PM."

Zhao Baoshan's long-distance bus ticket was for a bus departing at 8 p.m. He boarded the bus at 9 p.m., got off at a national highway stop, and then disappeared.

This morning he appeared in this building in the east of the city that was slated for demolition, and he died. The time of his death was close to the previous two cases—meaning that after he made the phone call, he did not go with those three people to kill Ma Guoqing; he ran away on his own after making the call.

He knew something bad was going to happen, and he was scared, so he withdrew 50,000 yuan in cash, bought a train ticket, and planned to run away. But he failed to escape.

He was captured and executed in the same manner by members of the same organization.

Jiang Ruolan squatted down next to Zhao Baoshan's body, her gaze falling on the dark blue plastic fragment on his fist. "He died clutching this thing."

His phone was smashed, and his bank cards were probably gone, but he held onto that piece of metal until the day he died.

He fought like a madman—a 49-year-old fat man, facing a professional assassin, beaten black and blue but still fighting, because he knew if he didn't fight, he was doomed. He understood what he was facing better than Ma Guoqing and Yu Xiaomei. He knew he was going to die.

Lu Zheng squatted down next to her, carefully picked up the blue plastic fragment with the evidence bag, and examined it closely in the morning light streaming through the window.

The fragment is very small, about the size of a fingernail, and is dark blue in color. It is made of engineering plastic and has an arc-shaped indentation on the back, making it look like part of a button or clip on some device.

He suddenly stood up, walked to Zhao Baoshan's body, pried open the other pocket of his down jacket, and pulled something out—a car charger with a dark blue plastic casing, the brand logo missing a piece.

He took the fragments out of the evidence bag and compared them to the gap in the charger—they fit perfectly.

"This is his own car charger. He broke the charger in half and was holding a piece in his hand."

Lu Zheng put the charger and the fragments into the evidence bag, then turned to look at Jiang Ruolan. "He was attacked in the car."

After he got into the car, he prepared to run away, but someone in the car—or rather, someone ambushed him nearby—attacked him when he was not paying attention.

The two started fighting in the car. Unable to grab anything else, he broke off a piece of the car charger he was holding and clutched it in his hand.

But he was unable to get out of the car and escape; after being subdued, he was taken to this demolished building and executed.

"The person who attacked him was very likely someone he knew."

Zhao Baoshan told someone Ma Guoqing's location over the phone, and then he tried to run away, but the person who told him "you can leave after you finish the call" lied to him.

The person was probably sitting in the back seat with a towel in their hand when he got on the bus.

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