Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 152

Chapter 152: Have You Found Yourself?

It seems that carrying cigarettes in my bag this morning was the right choice.

Qin Luo was smoking in the courtyard. This was the fifteen-minute break that Shen Yiyi had applied for from Piao Zheng. She knew that if she stayed any longer, Qin Luo would go crazy.

Shen Yiyi fanned the smoke away from the tip of her nose. “Don’t think about what he said.”

“Disgusting.”

Qin Luo put out the cigarette butt in her hand and lit a new one. “I’m just disgusted by his interpretation of my work.”

On Qin Luo’s face was a disgust that Shen Yiyi had rarely seen, a very cold-blooded expression. Then she fell silent, as if even sharing her feelings was painful.

“When can we finish?”

Shen Yiyi deeply regretted letting Qin Luo see him. She said, “Right now.”

It was Shen Yiyi’s decision to terminate Qin Luo’s continued interrogation, although Piao Zheng thought that Qin Luo was a little too sensitive. Zhan Luo’s voice was indeed a little loud, but it was not to the point of hurting anyone.

But since Qin Luo did not want to participate, it had to be him and Shen Yiyi who would go up in person.

Before she had even entered, Shen Yiyi had reminded him, “No matter what I say later, don’t be surprised.”

Piao Zheng was an old hand at interrogation. He held his teacup and nodded. And Shen Yiyi seemed reserved. She had participated in a few interrogations before, but every time it was to confirm the details of the physical evidence. She rarely played this kind of psychological game with criminals.

Zhan Luo smiled unexpectedly when he saw Shen Yiyi walk in.

Although it was a woman who had arrested him, he was still excited to be able to see Shen Yiyi here.

Shen Yiyi was more direct. She spread the documents from the identification center on the table and spoke before Piao Zheng. “You slit Xin Wuzheng’s throat with a steel ruler.”

Zhan Luo knew that he would inevitably face the death penalty. Whether he admitted it or not would make no difference to his sentence, so he just smiled but never gave an answer.

“The time of death was 2:30 in the morning.”

The police had investigated Xin Wuzheng’s itinerary on the day of his death and, combined with the search of the video surveillance near the factory, had found that Zhan Luo had also premeditated his murder.

Shen Yiyi looked at him calmly. “You know that even if Qin Luo doesn’t come today, and you don’t admit to these crimes, we can still convict you. It’s just that the process will be a little longer.”

Zhan Luo asked, “Has Qin Luo left?”

Shen Yiyi looked down. “No, she’s watching you from outside the glass.”

Zhan Luo asked with a smile, “Why is she unwilling to face me?”

Shen Yiyi did not follow his words and instead changed the subject back to the case. “Why didn’t you choose to poison Xin Wuzheng?”

Although it was a question, she asked it with a questioning tone. Then Shen Yiyi added, “I’ve read the report carefully.”

Her fingers moved along the font on the paper. “A horizontal circular ligature mark was found in front of the neck, located at the upper edge of the thyroid cartilage, with varying depths, accompanied by subcutaneous hemorrhage… It is suspected to be a pre-mortem injury caused by the pressure of a flexible ligature.”

“Hiding in the dark, he first strangled him with an electric wire.”

Shen Yiyi saw that Little Wang’s wording on the report was ambiguous and knew that the main examiner also had doubts about the arterial spray formed by first strangling and then slitting the throat. From the autopsy alone, Zhan Luo’s hand strength was not heavy. The subcutaneous hemorrhage at the neck was slight, and there was not even a soft tissue tear. It was clearly not to subdue, but more like to exhaust the other’s resistance. After the other was tired from struggling, he had given him a surprise cut.

She made it clear, word by word, “You were not sure that you could kill him with one cut, so you chose to strangle him to reduce his reaction ability, and then you chose to do it.”

Zhan Luo pursed his lips and looked at her calmly.

This indifferent attitude annoyed Piao Zheng. He slammed the table with force. “Is that right?!”

Shen Yiyi was speechless. She turned and glared at Piao Zheng. He had clearly promised when he had entered, so why couldn’t he control his emotions?

Zhan Luo’s originally listless expression was amused by Piao Zheng. “Using brute force will only hurt yourself.”

“You—”

Piao Zheng stood up abruptly. Before his butt had even left the chair, he was held down by Shen Yiyi. She calmly cut off the curse that he might have blurted out.

“But you created a chaotic scene of blood spray at the scene.”

Her voice was slow and pressing. “Do you know what we call this in the eyes of a forensic pathologist?”

—Mimetic violence.

Before and after the incident, Qin Luo’s business car had appeared in the park’s video footage many times, which proved that Zhan Luo had followed her and had been able to scout the production environment many times. He had taken advantage of the complicated timing of the handover of the production’s deputy team. It just so happened that the production was on vacation for the National Day holiday, and the electric track was being renovated. The messy power distribution room had become his childhood burial mound. He had taken advantage of Xin Wuzheng’s drinking to invite him to the power distribution room to talk, and had taken him by surprise and strangled him with a cable.

He had not dared to do it directly, but he had wanted to create a scene of slitting his throat with his own hands, so he had splashed the stolen blood plasma on the wall.

Shen Yiyi had looked at the bloodstain photos on the report. If the bloodstains on the wall were not real, then Zhan Luo must have repeatedly studied and imagined it, or he had personally seen a scene of blood spatter. Otherwise, the effect would not have been so realistic, such as the arched pattern formed by the ground and the wall. Even the forensic pathologist at the scene had been deceived by the “artistic” bloodstains.

“You need a visual that looks very grand and very bloody.”

Anyone who saw it would be overwhelmed by the bloody and violent scene. Anyone who saw it would scream with fear of him.

“It’s not to cover up, but to express the… righteous revenge scene that has been repeatedly played out in your fantasy.”

She knew very well that Zhan Luo’s killing intent was built on a long period of fantasy and self-incitement. That cut was not just to vent his anger, but also a kind of role-playing.

Shen Yiyi flipped another page, her expression a little helpless.

“In our forensic medicine, a special corpse scene will particularly magnify the criminal’s mentality. So… every forensic pathologist who has read the report knows that you don’t dare to look him in the eye. You can only wait until the victim is about to faint, or gives up resistance, to complete the murder with the smallest risk. You don’t dare to bear even a single bit of the risk that he won’t die.”

“The prop blood from the production is just the most ridiculous part of the scene.”

Killing a person and attacking their heart is just like this.

Hearing this, Piao Zheng no longer interjected. He quietly glanced at Zhan Luo. The man’s fingers began to tremble slightly, as if he were trying hard to suppress something that was about to surface.

Shen Yiyi did not even look at him. “We’ve taken the paint from the wall and have done an analysis. We know that you’ve tried the concentration ratio in advance to make it spray more realistically.”

“Even the plan was just to plan the aftermath, which just proves your fear.”

Her disdainful tone. “And you’re still a judge…”

This was Shen Yiyi’s counterattack on behalf of Qin Luo.

Although she was not good at comforting, she understood Qin Luo. Whether it was the reading group or her works, or the views she had expressed, in a sense, those were the souls that had flowed out of Qin Luo’s body. Now, Zhan Luo was using his mouth and eyes to vent his anger, making her his absurd accomplice.

All stories are the author’s umbilical cord blood. After being read, they become a blood transfusion bag of fantasy.

That is not understanding. That is deprivation. For a writer, it is a heart-wrenching pain.

The stories that Qin Luo had written were the pain they were experiencing, the lines that were divided from oppression, the existence that could not be replaced. Most importantly, those stories were her pride.

The stories she had written were to describe the cracks, not to create a gun muzzle.

Every rule that would tear them apart: family, intimate relationships, power… they had all personally felt it. Even if they had not killed anyone, they also wanted to figure out how women were cut open by society, how they were quietly buried, and how they were watched in a strange posture in a huge gap.

But the reader did not care about the blood that flowed out of those cracks.

Goddess, muse, Medusa… these images that had been objectified by art and religion for two thousand years were still women who would “burn out, melt, and fall” in the narrative. They were still mistresses, victims, and madwomen. Even if their methods affected the social order, even if they had only achieved success in their family or work, they were still puppets.

They were just projecting into a sensational story background, watching a group of women gain power through resistance, as if they were watching a beast that was already exhausted in a bullring.

In the eyes of these readers, a woman being forced to kill was often a phenomenon of male decline and social collapse.

But death had made their charm sacred again.

“You want to play the savior, to imitate the characters in movies and novels. Unfortunately, you are not a god, nor are you a savior. You are just a weak and ridiculous criminal who borrows others’ props and fantasizes about killing according to a script. That’s all.”

These words pierced Zhan Luo’s shoulders. He suddenly trembled, and his face changed. “But he still died at my hands, didn’t he?”

“You probably don’t know.” Shen Yiyi leaned back, her arms crossed, her words forceful. “You think you’re killing to protect, but actually…”

Piao Zheng tilted his head and looked at Shen Yiyi, his expression surprised.

Zhan Luo was the same as Piao Zheng.

“Actually, you’re just a tool.”

Shen Yiyi looked at the blurry glass over Zhan Luo’s shoulder. Qin Luo was not sitting inside, but it made her feel a burst of satisfaction. Perhaps this was the same feeling of being in love. She could have ignored this death row prisoner, but at this moment, she could not control the urge to crush his spirit. Compared to Qin Luo, she was more like a gambler. That day, she had bet that Zhan Luo would not dare to stab her. Today, she was betting that this knife would deeply shatter his shell.

“You’ve found a bunch of excuses to satisfy your own killing, but you’ve accidentally fallen into someone else’s murder plan.” Shen Yiyi’s speech suddenly became very literary, which made Piao Zheng very unaccustomed. “Or it’s not an exaggeration to say that you’re a clown who was tricked onto the stage, a puppet who still can’t be independent.”

Slap—

“But he died at my hands!!”

Zhan Luo slammed the iron table with force, but the handcuffs did not move. Besides the bulging veins on his arms and the sound, there was no other movement in the room.

Shen Yiyi gestured with her chin at his wrist. “Using brute force will hurt your hand.”

Hearing this, Piao Zheng lowered his head deeply to hold back his laughter, and then he composed himself and looked up again. “Who died at your hands?”

“Shang Yi and Xin Wuzheng were killed by me.”

If it weren’t for the fact that his hands were cuffed and his movements were restricted, Piao Zheng felt that he would very likely have slapped his own chest and said that it was his masterpiece.

Shen Yiyi just nodded lightly. “Your father was also killed by you, but that was not to protect your mother and sister.”

Zhan Luo wanted to stand up from his chair, but he was pinned to the spot. He gritted his teeth and struggled. He tried his best but found that the table and chairs did not move at all. The person reflected in the electronic clock opposite him was himself, covered in sweat and wearing a ferocious expression.

Shen Yiyi did not care about his excitement at all.

She said, “Forensic psychology says that patricide is often accompanied by a sexualized impulse. This release of violence can help the criminal find their subject, or become the pleasure mechanism of the subject.”

If the father is a symbol of a repressive order, then patricide is not only a destruction of the old power, but also a fear of a world without power.

What really makes a man fear patricide is not the death of the father, but the freedom of women.

If the father is killed, the mother can be free. In their hearts, a woman without a master, a woman who is no longer defined by the male power structure, is terrifying. So they will not kill their father for domestic violence against their mother, they will not kill their father for sexually assaulting their sisters, and they will not kill their father for the interests of an alliance. He is just for himself. When the father is old and no longer great, but has become a combination of a child and a ridiculous man, and is no longer the only opponent in his fantasy, then the time is ripe. He has completed the establishment of his self-narrative. After killing him, he can finally speak.

Shen Yiyi looked at him again. “So have you found yourself now?”