Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 99

Chapter 99: Collective Revenge?

“You’re right. Getting it is not the final victory.”

Wang Xi sighed at her love and raised a can to drink with her. “But at least there are no regrets.”

There was a damp, fishy smell by the river. When Qin Luo was a child, she liked to sit by the river and watch the small, transparent fish in the murky water. She liked these swimming creatures, which could be boundless. Qin Luo suddenly missed this smell. Tonight, a single punch had sent her back to the past she had been longing for, and had opened up her Ren and Du meridians. Although she was still nervous, she was at least much more at ease.

Shen Yiyi had been able to do it back then.
She could do it today too.

Qin Luo said in a low voice, “You’re not going back, are you?”

“Hmm?”

Qin Luo seemed to be asking about regret.

“I mean, you’re not going back to Singapore, are you?”

Wang Xi said, “Yes, she sent me to the airport and said goodbye. I guess we’ve all made a firm choice. We’re very good friends now. We won’t love in Singapore, but we can play in Singapore~”

Qin Luo did not say anything and just nodded.

The two of them sat on the bench and finished more than a dozen cans. The cool wind blew, and when Qin Luo stood up, her head was a little dizzy. Her alcohol tolerance had clearly decreased recently, and she silently warned herself not to drink too much tomorrow.

The two of them walked along the plastic track, talking about what had happened in the past three months, especially about the reading group.

Wang Xi asked in a low voice, “Are you still comfortable with Zhan Luo?”

Qin Luo had her hands in her pockets, her steps steady. “His response is quite fast, but he will repeatedly confirm with me on the execution.”

Thinking back on this period of time, Zhan Luo had accompanied her everywhere when things had happened. He could be both a bodyguard and a logistics support. He didn’t talk much, didn’t ask much, was responsible for the reading group, and was sympathetic to the farmers. Qin Luo could feel the spirit of Logos in him, a very persistent idealism.

“Then between me and Zhan Luo, who is more convenient?”

Qin Luo was amused and said deliberately, “It’s hard to say. After all, you’ve just come back to me. I have to observe you for a while.”

“I thought he was very responsible at that time, so I let him take over my contact work. I didn’t expect that he would become your assistant in the end.”

Qin Luo said, “President Liu thinks that it’s not a heartache to use a male assistant. I was on business trips all the time during that period.”

After she finished speaking, she was a little curious. “Speaking of which, I’m quite curious how Zhan Luo got into the reading group.”

Qin Luo did not pay much attention to the company’s personnel changes. In her impression, Zhan Luo had always been a volunteer for the activities. Occasionally, he would come to the logistics support for large-scale events, and also for physical labor like moving books. But for more specific things, Qin Luo did not remember much.

“He has a lot of connections with the reading group. When our office had just moved from Nanjing to Shanghai, he was one of the first batch of volunteers.”

Qin Luo had never heard of this and was very surprised. “Really?”

Wang Xi was dismissive of her boss’s memory. She said, “Zhan Luo came to the project team office to question us at that time, saying why only women could come to the reading group, and not men. He came several times, and in the end, Old Li was so annoyed that he asked you to find a way. You said to give him a volunteer work pass and let him audit.”

This memory was vague to Qin Luo. She did not remember it very clearly, but she did remember that after the office had landed in Shanghai, she had personally selected the first batch of members.

“Later, he was also busy with work and would come to listen to a class from time to time. And then, when our public welfare group went to the mountains to donate, we couldn’t find enough logistics personnel, and he came to help drive.”

Drive.

Qin Luo blinked. “At that time, that buzz cut, the buzz cut that had saved the car from the mud pit.”

Wang Xi did not remember this matter. She scratched her head. “I think it was him. Anyway, I only remember that he was very ordinary and rustic at that time.”

If a person had a lot of charisma and was very eye-catching, they would definitely attract attention. But if even Wang Xi had forgotten his appearance, it generally meant that he did not have much of a presence.

“Later, his work was not going well, and he broke up with his fiancée, so he simply came to Logos to be a full-time volunteer.” Wang Xi remembered something else. “Before he came to Logos, he had also shaved his head, saying that he had stayed in a temple for a while.”

A bald head?

If it were a bald head, how could Qin Luo have no impression at all? After all, Lu Xi had once blinded the entire production.

Qin Luo asked with confusion, “Are we talking about Zhan Luo?”

Wang Xi complained, “You were busy with the landing of Her Kill in Beijing at that time, busy preparing the script. You didn’t even come to the reading group a few times.”

“That was just last year.”

“Yes, last year you were still worried that no one would dare to take on the movie. Now the movie is half-filmed. Time really flies.”

Yes, time really flies.

The two walked to the entrance of Cloud Top, preparing to part ways. You Ning happened to call.

She told Qin Luo that the person had been safely delivered, and then asked about her fight. You Ning apologized. Originally, this matter should have been handled by the production. It had become an awkward situation, and she, as an assistant director, had an unshirkable responsibility. Qin Luo comforted her in return, saying that it would not affect the progress of the project, and that everything was fine.

You Ning said good night on the phone and hoped that Qin Luo would have a good dream.

You Ning was not the only one who said good night. Shen Yiyi was like clocking in, morning, noon, and night, without fail. At night, she would ask Qin Luo what she had eaten. At that time, Qin Luo had been scolded at the police station for hitting someone and did not want to reply. So Shen Yiyi had timed it and had asked every half an hour, and in the end, she had simply sent a period.

Qin Luo looked at the screen full of questions and finally calmly typed four words:

[I’m very safe.]

One in the morning.

The phone on the desk vibrated. Shen Yiyi was checking Shang Yi’s autopsy report and the toxicology identification. The lab had given it to her in the afternoon, and the main examiner had signed it and sent it over.

She put down the file and found that it was a message from Qin Luo.

It was good that she was safe.

Shen Yiyi did not want to disturb the other’s rest and simply did not reply, continuing to read the file.

“The heart weight is normal, and there are fine adhesions on the surface of the pericardium. The examination found that the heart structure is complete, and there is no obvious thrombus formation in the cavity. The myocardial texture is clear. There is a slight sclerosis in the local area near the free end of the left ventricle, but there is no large-area ischemic infarction or local large-scale necrotic focus.”

Mild coronary atherosclerosis. Shang Yi had a history of heart disease.

But there was no acute thrombosis, which meant that the deceased had not had a typical ACS. But after the police had first arrived at the scene, they had notified the forensic pathologist. After a preliminary observation, the forensic pathologist had judged it to be a sudden death based on the pupil reflex and the state of the body’s surface. Therefore, the case had been treated as an accident. But in the subsequent investigation, the police had found that there were signs of a crowd gathering and promiscuity at the party that night, and there was also the phenomenon of taking illegal psychoactive drugs. Therefore, Shang Yi’s case had been upgraded and had been directly transferred to the identification center.

Because the victim was a foreigner, and the family had concerns about the division of property, they had been slow to agree to an autopsy. The body had been frozen for too long, and the autopsy was affected by external conditions.

She flipped a page.

It was a microscopic examination of a slice made by the lab.

“Scattered gray-yellow tiny lesions are visible in the myocardial tissue, scattered in a punctate distribution, some with punctate hemorrhage, capillary rupture, disordered cell arrangement, focal apoptosis, and punctate interstitial fibrosis.”

The conclusion given by the main examiner was: no typical coronary artery occlusion or acute thrombosis, but suspected atypical damage caused by the action of a poison. The conclusion of death was a fatal arrhythmia, leading to sudden death.

Atypical damage.
And there was a phenomenon of reperfusion injury.

This meant that Shang Yi might have taken an overdose of drugs, had a transient myocardial ischemia, and had had a perfusion injury after the blood flow was restored. Then, he had ingested a large amount of alcohol and psychoactive drugs, and his emotional excitement had aggravated the burden on his heart. On the basis of his underlying disease, he had used a poison to catalyze it, causing a suspected accidental sudden death.

This kind of murder designed using a medical history was generally more common in family cases. Only an acquaintance could grasp the victim’s living habits. As long as they tampered with the long-term medication, it was easy to cause an overdose. And the killer had grasped Shang Yi’s habit of taking drugs and knew that there was a party on the day of the incident.

It was exactly the same as what Shen Yiyi had speculated a few days ago.

For the first time, Shen Yiyi hated her intuition. She frowned tightly and remembered that the actress from Her Kill had asked her about the punctuation of a line on WeChat. Because the actress did not understand the meaning of the line and was very afraid of being stiff and lacking in substitution in her performance, she had come to her for advice on every word, including the part about the catalysis of the poison.

Originally, when Shang Yi’s case had come, she had not thought much about it. But after the Qi Yingjun case had appeared, too many details corresponded, including the victim’s social status, personality characteristics, the cause of the crime, and the motive for the murder. Once a person is trapped in a narrative perspective, their logic will hit a wall. Shen Yiyi could not get out of the framework of Her Kill and had no mind to look at the evidence, but was desperately looking for differences between the two.

Shang Yi, male, a Chinese of foreign nationality.

He had a wife who was five years younger than him, and a son who was a foreigner and did not study in China. He had used investment loopholes to control several self-media companies through invisible means. The couple was estranged and had been separated for many years. Last year, his wife had returned from abroad to settle in China but had not lived with him, and had turned a blind eye to Shang Yi’s affairs outside.

She had specially returned to the country, had no investment assets, and had not lived with him.

From this point of view, the couple was either negotiating a divorce and division of assets, or they were maintaining the same goal and did not dare to cut ties.

A foreigner controlling a media company was a terrifying thing in itself. If Logos was really affected, it would not just be a matter of its reputation being ruined. It might even have criminal responsibility.

Shen Yiyi thought of Her Kill. Xiao Han, a phoenix man, had used his wife to turn his life around. To grasp the right to speak, he had had his female assistant help him pass on business secrets, but had been caught when she had turned against him.

At this thought, Shen Yiyi immediately called the person in charge of the case.

She used the excuse of analyzing the victim’s medical history and asked for a few of the latest analysis materials. She quickly reviewed them and found that the economic investigation had not participated in the investigation of the case.

Then there were two possibilities.

First: Shang Yi had colluded with transnational capital, had purchased several cultural service and media companies, and had tried to influence the domestic public opinion. His wife had returned to assist him in his transactions, or to become a supervisor. The conflict between Ranmei and Logos might also be a certain business need.

Second: Shang Yi just wanted to get rich and had no criminal intent. His wife had returned to the country to negotiate a divorce with him. Qi Yingjun of Ranmei Company had just died of a revenge killing.

But from the investigation, the couple had no intention of divorcing.

Or the economic investigation had already found something, but because it involved public opinion security issues, they had completely blocked the news. After all, the news about Shang Yi’s incident online was all the same, which was their usual trick.

Shen Yiyi couldn’t be bothered to look at the toxicology report and began to search for the trending topics of Logos in recent years online.

Female growth, workplace, family, self-awareness, cultural empowerment… Shen Yiyi was relieved. What Logos discussed were all existential issues. Although it guided the exploration of problems and the fight for rights and freedom of consciousness, and had an attitude but was very gentle, it did not involve the output of rights, and at least it would not cross the political red line.

Shen Yiyi made a special call to Lin Puping and asked him to go to the criminal tech department to get the Qi Yingjun case. Lin Puping, who was on duty, received the call and delivered it to the office in fifteen minutes.

“What are you looking at?”

Lin Puping saw that Director Shen was staring at the screen with great concentration. He curiously glanced at it and found that it was the script for Her Kill. His eyes lit up. “Director is also reading the script.”

He said in a tone of taking credit, “After you talked about the rat poison at the analysis meeting that day, I suddenly remembered the basic toxicology class we had at the production training. The video of the white mouse experiment you showed, the more I thought about it, the more it felt wrong. I went back and flipped through the script. The victims in these two issues were both transformed from perpetrators to victims, and the perpetrators were all women—”

Slap—

Shen Yiyi closed her computer and met his eyes with a cold gaze.

“Female criminals are all premeditated… they will choose the least dangerous and most fatal…”

Lin Puping’s voice grew smaller and smaller. He was stunned and saw the displeasure in the director’s expression.

“The documents have been delivered. Then I’ll go out first.”

Shen Yiyi stared at his back until he disappeared, and then she reopened her computer.

Lin Puping had little experience and always looked at things in a very simplistic way. He would organize the clues of a case from the perspective of the crime. If the criminal behavior patterns were similar, then the profile of the killer would also overlap.

And she had used her police intuition and had preconceived the story’s framework. Assuming that the killer was a serial killer, trying to kill in imitation, so she would connect the important elements, wanting to find the important elements in Her Kill that had influenced the killer.

She opened the criminal tech materials and flipped to the profile of the killer in the live stream murder case.

After so many days, the final analysis result of the killer’s profile was still a woman.

The direction of the profile guidance said: Because the weapon was a makeup product, and the logistics process was not transparent, the steps were secretive, and there was little evidence, it was all judged that the killer had premeditated the murder for a long time, and had used poison, with no torture, very low violence, and was far from the crime scene.

What if this was not a serial killer?
But an organized crime?

Or a collective revenge, not involving the business relationship between the two companies. Just as Lin Puping had said, female criminals would choose a method with high accuracy and low risk when committing a crime. They would not kill randomly out of impulse, but would plan for a long time to ensure that there were no mistakes.