Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 174

Chapter 174: The Red Silk · La Soie Rouge

After Shen’s father was discharged from the hospital, Shen Yiyi had stayed at home for a period of time. The father and daughter were both sullen, and with Qin Luo not around, there was basically no communication. Jiang’s mom would occasionally come to the Shen family’s house to bring food for the father and daughter. Shen Yiyi would ask about Qin Luo’s movements, but every time, Jiang’s mom would be evasive.

From intimacy to an old acquaintance, Shen Yiyi had suffered a backlash.

She had called Qin Luo several times and had also gone home with Jiang Yan, but every time, Qin Luo’s response was very polite and courteous. The phone would not be hung up too quickly, and the messages would not be replied to too late. Even if Qin Luo was angry, she would still maintain a sense of decency for both of them.

Shen Yiyi had also asked her father and friends for help, and had used her father’s phone to send a message to Qin Luo, trying to trick her into coming back for dinner, but the plan had failed every time. She had also asked Guo Rui for help, but Guo Rui had listened to Wang Xi’s advice and would not get involved in the conflict between the little couple this time.

It takes time to cool down. Shen Yiyi could only wait patiently for an opportunity.

The hearing was scheduled for the week before the spring break. The public security’s choice was not only to end the case quickly, but also to reduce some of the public opinion pressure during the New Year’s Eve.

On the twenty-first of the twelfth lunar month, the temperature in Fengjiang City had dropped sharply.

The conference room on the fifth floor of the judicial department had been temporarily converted into a hearing venue.

A notice with black characters on a white background was posted outside the door, “Regarding the Supplementary Investigation Hearing of the Shen Family’s Murder Case in 1997.” The heating in the room was on full blast, but everyone’s face was stiff and cold.

Especially the victim’s family, Shen’s father and Shen Yiyi, were sitting on one side of the conference table.

Shen Yiyi’s fingertips were on her chin. In front of her were the materials, the identification report, and the personal information of the criminal, Zhao Kang, was printed on it, along with his criminal acts.

Half an hour after the meeting had started, the investigation team was reporting the conclusion of the evidence.

The logic was meticulous, and the evidence was conclusive. They had contacted the French company Carette & Fils and had obtained the valid purchase records from back then, including the testimony of the old employees of the printing factory, and the comparison of the sculpture’s pigment and the signature overlap given by the judicial identification center. The age of the stabilizer and the production time of the sculpture had been determined, and all the clues were interlocked.

The foreign police had provided that he had died in two home invasion cases in 2007 and 2011, respectively. The crime scene and the scene of Xu Meng’s victimization were basically consistent. The victims had all suffered the same means of torture and murder. Based on the DNA comparison and confirmation left at the last murder case in 2011, the killer was finally locked down as Zhao Kang.

In this year and a half, the police had integrated all the materials collected over the past twenty years, had visited for half a year, and had even sent a special person to go abroad for data connection.

Due to the long time that had passed, and the lack of human and physical evidence, it was difficult for the police to fix the timeline and the criminal’s movements of the case. But the police had investigated his pre-departure materials and could confirm his escape time and route, which was two days after the incident, from Fengjiang to Shanghai, where he had bought the only flight out of the country that day, and had fled to Singapore.

There were also some supplementary evidence chains that had reconstructed many of the case’s details.

Zhao Kang was born in a small town in France. His parents were famous Chinese artists. His father, Zhao Bingyu, was a Parisian figurative painter who had been selected for the Art Biennale in the 1970s. His mother was French, and her family was a branch of a carving family. She had studied carving since she was a child and owned a gallery. Zhao Kang had been in contact with color and light and shadow since he was a child, but he had a rare color blindness, which had made him unable to accurately perceive the subtle differences between red, yellow, and blue.

Shen Yiyi had had a slight speculation about this after she had seen the cover. Later, after being questioned by the police, her speculation had also been confirmed. Zhao Kang had a paranoia about proofreading color cards in his printing work, and the special lenses in her memory fragments were enough to prove that color had placed a curse on him.

And this curse had landed squarely on her mother.

In a family where artistic talent was highly expected, color blindness was a shame. But it was a hereditary disease. Although Zhao Kang had hated this inheritance, he had also had a higher starting point than others because of his inheritance…

The police were still telling the details of the case.

The foreign police had found film and television materials about Xu Meng on Zhao Kang’s computer, which was enough to prove that even after so many years, even after Xu Meng was dead, he was still savoring her performance.

Hearing this, Shen Yiyi closed her eyes. The shadow standing behind her had drilled into her fantasy and had become a dark figure in the timeline.

In the year of Sino-French exchange, Zhao Kang’s family of three had been invited to watch an exchange performance.

At twenty, he had been sitting in the first row. At that time, he had not yet worn his custom-made glasses. The dim theater lights had painted the stage a blurry gray shadow, and the full house of red was just a distorted beam of light in his eyes. Monotonous, plain, and pale. The red in his eyes was like looking at a burning flame through a frosted glass.

The protagonist had not yet appeared, and Zhao Kang had begun to feel annoyed.

At that time, he had not yet known that the Xu Meng who was about to appear would become the only red fantasy in his life. The woman’s swaying posture was a language that had grown out of silence. A red ripple had peeled off from the void. God, with his hand of grace, had found his lost eyes and had briefly given him the complete color.

From then on, he could never forget that beam of red.

The police had found their group photo from the visit that year.

In the photo, Zhao Kang was standing on the very edge, reserved, his hands hanging by his sides. He was standing very far from Xu Meng, so far that he was like a passerby. But his smile was gentle, the most brilliant smile that Shen Yiyi had seen in any of the photos.

Subsequently, Zhao Kang had also actively participated in the exchange group’s visit to China and had watched Xu Meng’s performance many times in Beijing and Suzhou. But the police had learned from the provincial theater that Zhao Kang, as a foreign affairs personnel, had never gotten close to Xu Meng, and had rarely even talked to her in private.

Shen Qinwen and Shen Yiyi had also never remembered such a person. Even though Zhao Kang had worked with Shen’s father at the same university back then, they had never heard of anyone who had admired his wife.

Perhaps, Zhao Kang had originally established a boundary between the two of them and had only seen himself as a pair of eyes, quietly admiring that color. As long as Xu Meng could continue to dance, the color in his heart would not fade.

Unfortunately, a dancer will eventually have a curtain call.

Shen Yiyi’s arrival had made the dancer stop. Xu Meng had negotiated with her husband and had resigned from her job to stay at home and take care of her daughter.

The ten years that the dancer had been interrupted was also the period when the middle-aged Zhao Kang was in an artistic predicament. He had lost the dancer, as if he had lost his color. His creation had suffered one blow after another, and in the end, he could only find a job at an art academy.

Perhaps Zhao Kang had accidentally found a work opportunity to go to China. It just so happened that the work location was in Shanghai, near the theater where Xu Meng had worked. He had thought that if he had a chance to see the dancer again, he would definitely make up for his regrets.

The police had gotten a list of foreign affairs personnel from the education system and had found that Zhao Kang had communicated with the school many times and had helped Fengjiang University get a foreign expert quota.

From this, it was known that Zhao Kang’s purpose at that time was too persistent, and even a little twisted.

The exchange office and the school had confirmed that the dormitory where Zhao Kang had lived was near the family compound. They had a special guesthouse to live in, and the distance was not far. The school had provided Zhao Kang with a car, which had greatly shortened the travel distance.

The family compound where the incident had happened had no access control back then. Zhao Kang had been in the university for two and a half years and was familiar with the environment near the family compound. It was very likely that he had scouted the location in advance, had avoided the main entrance, and had entered and exited easily from the back alley.

Three days before the incident, it was the day of Xu Meng’s comeback performance. The local newspapers and cultural groups had all promoted Xu Meng’s performance extensively. In the newspapers that Shen’s father had kept, Xu Meng was holding a bouquet of flowers, her face full of happiness as she celebrated her comeback. Although the theater in the small place was not big, and the equipment was simple, the scene was very hot, and there were even many viewers who had specially come from the neighboring province.

It was just that she had not performed The Red Silk that day.

There were no records of the ticket sales back then, and there were also many complimentary tickets. The police could not prove that Zhao Kang had bought a ticket to this performance, but from the time of the incident, his motive for the crime must have been influenced by this performance.

A person’s death leaves no one to confront. Shen Yiyi could not know what Zhao Kang’s feelings for her mother were mixed with. Perhaps it was admiration, pity, or perhaps it was a twisted anger that had caused him to have a strong psychological conflict.

He was so pathological that he had had a delusion:

A woman who was so radiant would be neglected by the stage because of childbirth, and from the focus of thousands of people, she would just become a mother.

He had felt sorry for the ten years that the dancer had been stagnant.

He had been in a daze in the shadows of the audience for a long time. His red, his dancer’s final destiny had actually returned to the ordinary in this way.

She shouldn’t be here.
She shouldn’t be in a small theater with scattered audiences and temporarily piled props, bowing to an unprofessional and unappreciative audience.

She belongs to Paris.
She belongs to herself.

“We can confirm that Zhao Kang is the killer through the cross-clues.”

The criminal investigation personnel’s voice finally fell, and the conference room was briefly silent. “Zhao Kang died abroad. The case will be closed after it is archived, and the prosecution will be terminated. We express our apologies to the victim’s family and our condolences to the victim.”

Everyone lowered their heads and mourned in silence.

But Shen Yiyi did not speak. This timeline was not yet complete. Why had her mother been targeted by him? Why had he followed her into her house? And why had her mother invited him in? Why hadn’t he killed her along with her?

Shen Yiyi opened her eyes, and her thoughts stopped here.

It’s okay.
It can end here.

Shen Yiyi gently flipped over a piece of material, as if she were handling an ordinary piece of work.