Chapter 98: The Psychologist – 5
Pressing her lips together, Tang Yingli immediately rushed forward.
“You animal. You ungrateful animal.”
“Alright, alright, stop hitting him. Mr. Tao…”
The prosecutor’s verbal warning was useless. Tang Yingli strode forward and forcefully pushed the man who was on top of Tao Qianya away.
“Please be rational. This is the Criminal Investigation Division office, not a place for you to vent your emotions.” She stood in front of Tao Qianya and pushed the enraged man back with her gaze. “Dr. Tao, are you okay?”
Tao Qianya’s cheek was swollen, and his eyes were filled with tears, his expression shocked and in disbelief.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a neuroscientist who is here to assist the Criminal Investigation Division with a criminal case. I also participated in yesterday’s autopsy. I can understand your grief at losing a family member.” She glanced at Tao Qianya. “But even so, it is absolutely not Dr. Tao’s fault.”
He immediately covered his face and cried, and the prosecutor finally managed to support him.
Whether he could hear her or not, she still said seriously, “We will do our best to find out the truth of the case and find the real killer.”
“Dad…”
The prosecutor helped him slowly walk to the main door. She took out a handkerchief and dabbed the wound on Tao Qianya’s face. “It will hurt a little… are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He took a small step back and took Tang Yingli’s hand. “Thank you, Teacher.”
“Is what he said just now true? That third body…”
His eyes were glazed over, and it took him a while to finally nod.
“Yes, that was my uncle, the person who took me in and took care of me after my parents died.” He turned his head. “And the person I never want to see again in my life.”
**
He didn’t want to see him again, but he never thought he would see him again in this way.
“When Chief Fang told me the location of the fire yesterday, I felt it was very familiar, because it was near my uncle’s house, and I used to go there a lot.”
Holding the drink Tang Yingli had given him, Tao Qianya sat on a bench with his elbows on his knees and recounted his past.
His family was originally from the central and southern parts of the country. In the summer of the year he was about to start elementary school, his parents had gone abroad, and they had left him in the care of his grandmother. But that was the year his parents had been shot and killed in a robbery abroad.
Without his knowledge, he had instantly become an orphan.
After the news had reached Taiwan, it had even sparked a custody battle. His maternal uncle and his paternal uncle had gone to court, and in the end, his paternal uncle had won custody of him.
“But when I really went to my uncle’s house, everything was different from what I had imagined.” Tao Qianya took a deep breath, trembling as if he were enduring something. “His parenting style was very strict, almost to the point of being unreasonable. My two cousins had my aunt to protect them, after all, they were her own sons. But I wasn’t… it was common for me to be beaten so badly I couldn’t get out of bed for a small mistake, and I also had to do housework. I won’t even mention my aunt’s cold taunts and their ridicule.
“I never considered that place my home,” he said in a low voice, tilting his head back and taking a big gulp of his drink.
“After I got into high school, I wanted to live in the dorm no matter what, because it was a legitimate way to escape their control. To my surprise, he agreed… but besides my tuition, they barely gave me any living expenses, and of course, they took all the things my parents had left behind… I managed to finish my studies by working part-time and getting scholarships. I also got through medical school by working part-time and getting scholarships… since I graduated from high school, I have never gone back to that house, and I haven’t even contacted them.”
“Over ten years have passed, and people’s appearances will change, not to mention he was burned beyond recognition.”
“I really didn’t expect it to be him.” The plastic bottle was deformed in his palm. “He was a good man in the eyes of his neighbors and colleagues. Who would have known he was a different person at home? I don’t deny that after I lost my parents, he gave me a place to stay, but that’s all.”
“About your parents… is that the reason you went into forensic medicine?”
“Yes. I only know that my parents were shot and killed. It is said that their deaths were tragic. My uncle had the follow-up information, but I couldn’t find it even though I had searched for it. I’ve always been bothered by it…” he paused for a moment, “on the other hand, I don’t mind touching a corpse. When I first encountered a cadaver in medical school, I deeply felt that although a person can’t speak after they die, their body can tell us… the purpose of forensic medicine is to find out the truth behind it.”
“I see.”
After the story was over, Tao Qianya suddenly smiled with relief. “It’s been a long time since I’ve mentioned it… I’ve made a fool of myself in front of you, Teacher. I hadn’t even recovered from my cousin punching me just now, and I had to trouble you to intervene. It’s so embarrassing. If it happened again, he might be the one who gets beaten to the ground.”
“Did he say anything about your uncle’s movements before his death?”
He shook his head. “I only remember that he had a habit of jogging in the morning, but the fire happened at noon, which is not a time he would have been there.”
“Is he retired?”
“I didn’t ask, but he probably isn’t. He’s a bank business manager, and he’s only in his early sixties. He probably wouldn’t have retired so early.”
“No wonder you said he was a good man in the eyes of his colleagues and neighbors.” He must have been very good at socializing.
“Yes, he was really very friendly to people other than his family. So even if I wanted to complain, outsiders wouldn’t have believed me.”
Tang Yingli’s index finger on her glasses, “Perhaps this can be a clue…”
“Hm?”
At that moment, Chen Huomu came out of the stairwell. “Teacher, so you’re here.”
“Officer Chen?”
“I thought about it later, and it’s more convenient to print out the information. This is the information I got from the fire department. I started from last August.”
“Oh, so meticulous.” She took it and quickly flipped through it.
Turning to Tao Qianya, Chen Huomu cried out, “Dr. Tao, what happened to your face?”
“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. I was just punched by a family member who came to confirm the identity of the deceased…”
“Why would they punch a medical examiner? Which family did that?” he looked like he was going to get to the bottom of it. Tao Qianya smiled and, in turn, comforted Chen Huomu.
After a brief browse, she found that this file had already been preliminarily screened, and records of obvious non-arson fires, such as electrical fires, had been removed. “Is this all?”
“Yes, is it not enough?” There have been more than twenty suspected arson cases in the past six months.
“The two arson cases yesterday, did they both use flammable materials like oil?”
“The one in the third-floor apartment did, but the empty house seems to have been set on fire directly through the discarded furniture.”
“Someone was attacked in the second arson case. I originally thought he was attacked because he was discovered during the arson, so he was knocked out…” her index finger lightly touched her lips, and she frowned, “what if it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision?”
“Not a spur-of-the-moment decision?”
“Dr. Tao, the injury on the third victim’s head, where was it approximately?”
“The upper edge of the ear, near the temple.”
“He was very tall, right?”
“About the same as me.” Tao Qianya gave a wry smile. He was almost 185 centimeters tall.
“The culprit is right-handed, and he was lying in wait at a specific location. Then he waited for the third victim to approach the empty house, attacked him from behind and knocked him out, and then dragged him into the closet in the empty house. But the deceased’s fingernails were damaged to some extent. Now that his identity has been revealed, with his profession, it’s impossible for him to have caused that kind of damage, so he either had a physical conflict with the killer before he was attacked, or he was attacked and then made a final struggle before he died in the fire.”
“But if it was a final struggle… the killer would have definitely made a second attack to get rid of him.”
“Yes, and we didn’t find any signs of a second attack on the body…” she rested her chin on her hand, and vaguely remembered the tragic state of the front of the body, which had been particularly badly burned, “maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t do it, but that it was deliberately covered up.”
“Covered up by burning the body?”
“Yes. Did he have a habit of wearing jewelry?”
Tao Qianya’s eyes widened. “Now that you mention it… yes. He at least wore a wedding ring, and he had a hobby of collecting famous watches.”
However, no traces of any metal jewelry were found on the body.
“For you to ask that, Teacher, it seems you and the victim were very close, Dr. Tao.”
“Thank you for the information.” She stuffed the stack of papers back into Chen Huomu’s hand. “Let’s check again. If the crime really happened as we assumed… there must be some other details on the body that we missed.”
Tao Qianya quickly stood up from the bench. “Okay, let’s do it right away.”
**
A suit jacket, an ID, a briefcase, and a ring. He found an iron box and threw all the things that should be destroyed into it.
The last item… was that guy’s watch. Hmph, he talked about how frugal he was, but in the end, he was just showing off his wealth in a low-key way.
He hesitated for a moment, but still decided to put the watch in his pocket. He poured kerosene on it, threw in a matchstick, and the various items in the box began to burn.
Ah, it felt so good. It wasn’t very cold today, otherwise it would have been even more comfortable to warm himself by the fire with that guy’s things. While the fire was raging, he lit another match, lit a cigarette, and sat in the courtyard, watching it burn.
Unexpectedly, the lights in the house turned on.
“You… you’re burning things in the backyard again. What are you burning?” a white-haired old lady with a cane and a birdcage in her other hand asked.
He stared at her, surprised that she would be back at this time.
“Old Ma was suddenly called back by his wife. We were one short, so we couldn’t play. It’s so disappointing… don’t burn things here in the future. If I see you, I’ll break your legs.” she warned coldly and hung the birdcage on a hook by the back door.
The bird in the cage was a parrot. In her eyes, this parrot was far more important than him.
“Squawk, dog legs. Break dog legs, squawk.” The parrot repeated its owner’s words. He gritted his teeth and vaguely heard her happy laughter.
His rare good mood was completely ruined. He glared at the birdcage and threw the unfinished cigarette into the gradually extinguishing iron box.
