Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 138p2

Chapter 138 p2: Please Talk to Me

Shen Yiyi hated using psychological warfare to reform criminals. She trusted hard evidence more, believed in bloodstains and fibers, the angle of a fracture and the dust in a fingernail. The truth passively stated on the traces was more reliable than language.

But a person’s heart always has a gap, and a black and white shadow will appear.

Crime is an act that has already crossed the line at the moment when a person’s heart “thinks they have the right to judge others.”
Punishment is the collapse of conscience and faith, the soul slowly being corroded in loneliness.

Li Peipei must have read Notes from the House of the Dead countless times in prison. She must have understood what a prison was, and what freedom was.

Shen Yiyi changed the subject. “Did you give Zhan Luo that copy of Notes from the House of the Dead?”

Li Peipei shook her head. “He bought it himself.”

“I see.” Shen Yiyi nodded and suddenly changed her tone. She was deliberately imitating Qin Luo’s usual way of speaking. “He used you.”

Li Peipei did not say anything.

“He recognized you from the many people at Logos.” Shen Yiyi was as if she were playing a puzzle game. “He remembered the past you had talked about in the chat room and found that you had not yet walked out of the cage. So he deliberately approached you when you were being blamed by Shang Yi, and afterward, he took a book that you had read when you had first met.”

The prison education classes were always extremely boring. Qin Luo’s team was a rare fresh activity, especially when she was standing on the stage, holding a book in one hand and smiling and talking to them. The inmates around her were not very cultured and were used to looking down, so no one was willing to respond to her.

But Qin Luo still showed enthusiasm, not for the sake of the activity, and certainly not for a perfunctory speech to complete the task.

Li Peipei was full of envy.

She did not envy Qin Luo’s status or ability, but that she seemed to be afraid of nothing, not of isolation, not of a cold reception. She seemed not to need others’ understanding and could bravely jump down regardless of the height.

Qin Luo had made Li Peipei long for it. She had realized that true liberation was never about getting freedom, but about discovering that she was in pain in the cage.

“Yes.” Li Peipei was finally willing to face it. She nodded.

Qin Luo had indeed given her a great shock, making her think that the cage was not given by Shang Yi, but was a restraint brought on by rules, gender, emotions, and the self.

She had thought that as long as she tried her best to break free, she could get out of the predicament. So when she had just been released from prison, she had participated in a few offline activities of the reading group.

Li Peipei relented and stated calmly, “When I was in prison, I had a deep impression of him. He had a very short buzz cut, very much like an inmate.”

“Later, I went to a few offline activities. At that time, I had just been released from prison, couldn’t find a job, and my family also disliked me. I always felt very lonely. So I would often share my recent situation in the chat room and, with the encouragement of my book friends, I worked hard to live step by step.”

“Everyone in the chat room is anonymous, and we don’t know each other. So I would often complain and talk about some stories that were difficult for me to talk about.”

Shen Yiyi was racing against time. “So when Zhan Luo became Qin Luo’s assistant and entered Logos, he recognized you in the course of his work and asked you why you were still with Shang Yi.”

Li Peipei smiled wryly and nodded. “At that time, I was a little ashamed of his question.”

Clearly, she had sworn to fight Shang Yi to the end and was determined to escape the quagmire, but she was still stuck in the same place, as if all her efforts had been in vain, and she was a hopeless case.

Shen Yiyi frowned. “Zhan Luo pressed you about your pregnancy, so you told him that you were forced to get pregnant.”

Li Peipei had not expected the woman on the video call to be so prescient.

“What happened to you in Chongqing?”

The topic had changed too quickly. Li Peipei was stunned and was silent for a long time.

Seeing that she did not want to talk, Shen Yiyi had already guessed the result. She did not want to waste time with her and asked a special question. “If Zhan Luo wants to kill Liu Jia, will you choose to save her or kill her?”

Li Peipei felt that Shen Yiyi was absurd and said without any concealment, “Of course I’ll save her.”

She asked again, “After Shang Yi’s death, did Zhan Luo contact you?”

“He did.” Li Peipei nodded. “He asked me what I wanted to do in the future after I left Shang Yi, and if I needed money or anything.”

Shen Yiyi continued to press, “Did he talk to you about the future?”

Li Peipei looked down and searched her mind for fragments of her conversation with Zhan Luo. But she actually did not care about Zhan Luo’s future at all, nor was she concerned. After thinking for a long time, she finally found a keyword.

“He said he wanted to open a bookstore in the mountains.” Li Peipei couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “This person is simply delusional.”

“He wants you to understand him more.”

Shen Yiyi said in a deep voice, “Tell me about the Zhan Luo you know.”

***

The mountain search team was getting bigger and bigger. They had been searching the mountain for half an hour, but they had found nothing. Li Peng was on the verge of a breakdown at the foot of the mountain. He knew very well that this kind of aimless search without a target was a pure waste of manpower.

“Qin Luo, where are you?”

Shen Yiyi rushed out of the conference room of the guesthouse and shouted Qin Luo’s name in the corridor.

Hearing the sound, Qin Luo immediately opened the door. “What’s wrong? Did you find her?”

“I remember that in Her Kill, there’s a character whose husband is a poet, the one who fed her husband rat poison to kill him…” Shen Yiyi’s speech was very fast. “The ending of that woman in the story is—”

Qin Luo blurted out, “After she was released from prison, she published a collection of poems with her husband’s manuscript and opened a bookstore.”

Shen Yiyi wanted this confirmation from the author. She even completed it for her. “She opened a bookstore in the mountains.”

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong with the bookstore?”

Shen Yiyi waved her hand, walked past Qin Luo to the large conference room, pushed open the door, and said directly to the online Piao Zheng, “He didn’t go into the mountains.”

“What? He’s not in the mountains?”

“You can send a letter to check all the logistics. The address of the recent book logistics sent to the county and town, we can lock down his location as quickly as possible.”

“Are you sure this is the right way to investigate?”

Piao Zheng was confused, but he had to do it. After all, besides believing in Shen Yiyi, he had no other choice.

“And.”

Shen Yiyi remembered that on the way, Wang Xi had said that Zhan Luo had been a logistics manager and was responsible for the logistics of the public welfare books. And she remembered that there was a logistics center in this mountainous area that was invested in and operated by Liu Jia. She pointed to Wang Xi’s computer. “Check! Have you had any orders to transport books to the mountainous area in the past six months?”

Wang Xi was also fast. After a few simple calls, she had the newly appointed warehouse manager call back.

“There was indeed a delivery to the county town three days ago. Because it was an order from the reading group, the warehouse paid special attention to it.”

Three days ago was the time when Zhan Luo had left Shanghai.

“Send me the address!”

***

The voting was still going on. There was less than an hour left on the countdown, and the ratio of votes had already reached 8:2.

The number of people who had chosen to rescue had reached eighty percent.

The search and rescue team on the mountain had already stopped searching and was waiting on standby. And the village entrance at the halfway point of the mountain was crowded with police cars.

The mountain wind suddenly tightened, and the night tightly covered the mountain village. The police cars at the village entrance formed a long line, and the red and blue police lights flickered in the silence, and then suddenly went out, leaving only a dead silence.

Behind the roadblock, several police officers were standing in a row. The walkie-talkies on their waists were emitting a red light, and their breathing was particularly clear in the dark night. The shadows of the stray dogs were also blocked outside the cordon. They were howling in a low voice and were driven away by the police officers with their batons.

The guesthouses on both sides of the street had their doors and windows tightly closed.

The window lattices were gently pushed open by someone, and pairs of eyes revealed a flustered gaze, but they did not dare to make a sound to disturb. The children were pushed back into their rooms by the adults.

An old man was surrounded by the police, his fingers unconsciously rubbing a handkerchief, but his gaze never left the direction of the police lights.

“When was the house rented out?”
“In July of this year.”
“Is there a signed contract?”

The old landlord looked at the photo on his phone and shook his head.

There was no contract. They didn’t understand the process of renting a house. “No one lives in that broken house. That young man asked around and found me. He rented it for 30,000 a year. There’s no contract.”

Li Peng’s tone was stern. “Was he alone?”

The middle-aged man standing next to the old man spoke. “My father lives with me, just at the foot of the mountain. Our family doesn’t go up the mountain. We don’t know how many people live in the house.”

Shen Yiyi put on her Bluetooth headset and a newly issued recorder. She got out of the police car and took out a tissue to wipe her hands.

The oxygen in the mountains was sufficient, and there was a thick smell of wet grass. Shen Yiyi looked back at the car. Qin Luo was staring at her through the car window.

When they had just come, Qin Luo had insisted on coming with her. Shen Yiyi couldn’t persuade her and had compromised and had agreed to let her wait in the car.

Without the streetlights, Shen Yiyi couldn’t see Qin Luo’s expression clearly. There was only a dark outline between them. She nodded comfortingly, indicating that it was not a big deal.

“What’s the situation at the scene?” Piao Zheng was in the command hall, standing in front of the screen with many leaders. Everyone had their hands on their hips, just waiting for the final arrest. “Have the special police arrived?”

The special police had long been ready. They had their weapons on their waists and were arranged in a neat circle around the old house, waiting for the command, ready to break in.

“There’s still a hostage inside. We can’t go in rashly. We should send him a message and exchange a police officer to go in and negotiate the terms.”

The negotiator in the command hall gave an analysis of the situation. He even proposed, “Use the village’s loudspeaker to broadcast, to tell him that he has no way out, to put psychological pressure on him first, and then to send a message.”

And so, a deafening broadcast broke the quiet night ten minutes later.

In an instant, the dogs were barking, the birds were flying, and every household had their doors and windows tightly closed.

“This is the Xiashan County Public Security Command Center. We have blocked all entrances and exits. Please respond immediately and release the hostage and remain calm.
We guarantee that your personal safety and legal rights will be fully respected.
If you have other requests, please communicate through peaceful dialogue and do not escalate the situation.
We reiterate: the conditions you have requested can only be achieved through communication.”

The broadcast was very loud and echoed in the mountains. It was played on a loop several times, which made everyone anxious.

Time was stretched here, and every second was like a blade. All the police officers were watching the lit window with their eyes.

Shen Yiyi was also anxiously staring at her phone.

Just now, she had sent a request for negotiation, but she had not yet received a reply.

She was full of anxiety.

Shen Yiyi had never been so eager to catch a criminal, not just because the other had killed someone, had monitored Qin Luo, and had kidnapped Liu Jia, but also because he had also judged her.

She stood in the darkness with a calm and composed air. The shadow beside her was still following her, but it no longer had its former deterrent force.

At this thought, Shen Yiyi couldn’t help but chuckle. Zhan Luo had made her lose face in front of the whole country, but he had just happened to cure her illness. The cage in her heart was closing silently, leaving only the liberation of the present.

So what if the inner demon that couldn’t be removed lingered? There was no hell in this world. You could walk out just by pushing open the door. That was just a nine-year-old who needed comfort, not a permanent “criminal.”

No one could judge her.
No one could.

She knew that Zhan Luo was stalling for time with the police, perhaps waiting for the voting to end, or to complete some final words. In short, if they could arrest Zhan Luo alive tonight, this experimental crime would be written into the textbooks.

Then she would not only be like a problem-solver, but more like an exorcist.

The loudspeaker had not stopped, but there was still no movement in the room.

Shen Yiyi applied for permission from the command hall in her headset. She wanted to see if she could catch the person without harming the hostage. But the negotiator thought that the criminal had no intention of negotiating, and that a direct break-in was the most suitable.

But Piao Zheng had voted for Shen Yiyi: “Let Little Shen give it a try.”
“Little Shen has followed this case a lot. Maybe there’s hope. It’s okay to give it a try.” Old Geng also thought that Director Shen had a chance and voted in favor.

The leadership team was also worried. After all, there was no map of the inside of the house, and the special police could not guarantee that a direct break-in would not anger the kidnapper and cause him to kill the hostage directly. After hesitating for more than ten minutes, they had agreed with Shen Yiyi’s idea.

After getting permission, Shen Yiyi began to type furiously:

[I’m very curious. If the current vote is more for judging her, what would the situation be now?]

A minute later, she sent another message.

[It doesn’t matter to you whether the netizens judge her or not.]

Two minutes later, she sent another message.

[We’ve caught the person who killed Shang Yi.]