Chapter 55 Doubts

Detention center interrogation room.

Facing the DNA test report, Yang Qi opened his mouth, but in the end, not a single word came out.

Ji Baiwei was not in a hurry, waiting quietly.

After an unknown amount of time, Yang Qi took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, calming the turmoil in his heart.

"Can I have a cigarette?" he asked.

Ji Baiwei motioned with his hand, and Fang Zhou immediately stepped forward, placing a cigarette in Yang Qi's mouth and lighting it for him.

After taking two puffs, Yang Qi looked much more spirited, and his complexion calmed down: "I did it."

"What did you do!" Ji Baiwei raised his voice.

"Kill someone."

"Who did you kill!"

"My wife."

"What is your wife's name!"

"Hou Jiarou."

At this point in the interrogation, Ji Baiwei relaxed. He searched his pockets for a long time, pulled out a cigarette pack, extracted one, lit it, and then asked, "Why did you kill her?"

Yang Qi lowered his head and smoked: "I love her."

Ji Baiwei frowned: "Can you speak like a normal person? Straighten up your attitude! This is a detention center, and we are conducting an interrogation, not filming a romantic drama!"

Yang Qi elaborated on the three words he had just spoken: "I love her, but she wanted to divorce me."

Ji Baiwei: "Because of infidelity?"

Yang Qi nodded: "Yeah."

Ji Baiwei: "You cheated yourself, yet you resent your wife for wanting a divorce—is that your logic?"

Yang Qi suddenly started laughing. The laughter grew louder and louder, echoing in the interrogation room. When the laughter stopped, he looked at Ji Baiwei and said, "I've already said, Jiarou is extremely resistant to intimate relationships.

My wife resists intimacy, so was I wrong to go outside to satisfy my needs? On the contrary, Jiarou wanted to divorce me—was her logic correct?

Tell me, was it?"

Ji Baiwei said: "I'm not here to argue with you about right and wrong. When did you kill her, and how did you do it? Give me a detailed account of the process."

Since he had decided to confess, Yang Qi no longer held anything back: "On the second day of the Lunar New Year, after Jiarou had an argument with her mother, I drove her mother out of the residential complex. When I came back, Jiarou was looking at my phone... and discovered the text messages exchanged between me and an escort."

As Yang Qi went on, everyone understood.

Previously, Yang Qi had cheated on Hou Jiarou with a bank colleague. Although Hou Jiarou's relationship with Yang Qi had deteriorated after the quarrel, she had not chosen to divorce him—not until she discovered that Yang Qi frequented prostitutes, which made her feel utterly disgusted and unable to accept it.

Yang Qi apologized, but Hou Jiarou refused to forgive him and demanded a divorce, their dispute gradually escalating into a shouting match.

Just as Hou Jiarou returned to the bedroom to pack her clothes and prepare to leave, Yang Qi tried once more to make her stay, but to no avail, leading to a physical altercation between them.

Having lost his mind, Yang Qi grabbed the thin summer quilt from the bed and smothered Hou Jiarou to death, then disposed of her body late that night near the toy factory.

The wet tissue left behind on the roadside was the one Yang Qi had used to clean his hands on the way home. He had thrown it out of the window, and later placed it in the trunk out of routine habit.

It was that very same pack of wet wipes, which had not yet been finished.

Ji Baiwei: "There were no relevant text messages on your phone. Where did they go?"

They were certainly deleted, but this was part of the interrogation protocol.

Yang Qi replied, "Deleted."

"Why did you choose that spot to dump the body?" Ji Baiwei continued to ask.

"At the time, I..." Yang Qi paused for a moment before continuing, "At the time, I was terrified and didn't know what to do. I only thought about throwing the body as far away as possible."

Ji Baiwei: "Why did you only throw away the summer quilt on the third day of the New Year?"

Yang Qi: "My mind was a complete mess. It wasn't until the next day that I remembered the quilt might be evidence, so I took it out and threw it away that night."

Han Ling had watched the entire process, keeping his eyes locked on Yang Qi without missing a single frame. Reviewing all the clues, he felt something was not quite right.

Perhaps he was wrong, but he could not simply pretend he didn't know.

At that moment, he did not speak out to interrupt the interrogation process.

"Your motive for the crime wasn't just because Hou Jiarou wanted a divorce, was it?" Fang Zhou, who had been observing from the side, spoke up. "Through our inquiries, we found that you are a mama's boy—reliant on your mother and afraid of her. And your mother cares deeply about her reputation. Once news of your cheating and soliciting prostitutes gets out, the whole family would suffer social death, right?"

Yang Qi looked at Fang Zhou and, after a silent moment, admitted: "What you said is right. That was part of the reason, I suppose."

Ji Baiwei: "Where did you put the body when you dumped it?"

Yang Qi: "In the front passenger seat. I even fastened the seatbelt for her. She used to... always sit in the front passenger seat."

Ji Baiwei understood. No wonder no biological tissue of Hou Jiarou was found in the trunk or the back seat; it turned out the body had been in the front passenger seat.

"Tell us the route."

The work of securing the confession lasted for two hours. Judging from the corpse-dumping route provided by Yang Qi, he had not dared to take the main roads, basically sticking entirely to back alleys, which was why no surveillance cameras had captured his car.

Or perhaps some cameras had captured it, but the footage had been overwritten due to retention limits.

Currently, only surveillance footage from accident-prone areas and special road sections was retained for longer periods.

When Ji Baiwei asked about the phone call on the night of the fifth day of the New Year, Yang Qi confessed that he had made it using Hou Jiarou's mobile phone with the intention of diverting the police's investigative focus.

He knew Hou Jiarou had a very poor impression of Zhao Zhiqiang; as long as there was a call record, the police would inevitably focus their attention on Zhao Zhiqiang.

After making the call, he smashed the phone directly and destroyed it.

"I failed her."

These five words were Yang Qi's final summary of the entire wife-murder case.

Having obtained the complete confession, the group left the detention center.

Ji Baiwei let out a long breath. Overall, the investigation of this case had progressed relatively smoothly, with new clues pointing to the suspect every day, and the summer quilt ultimately found by Han Ling and Tong Feng becoming the decisive piece of evidence.

The investigators had worked hard, and the forensic examiners had worked hard too.

"Han Ling, you've made another contribution. Well done." Ji Baiwei did not stint on his praise.

"Huh?" Tong Feng was displeased. "Team Leader Ji, what about me? Tong Feng and I are partners!"

Ji Baiwei smiled: "Tong Feng did well too, excellent work. Our job isn't over yet; let's head back to the precinct first."

Now that Yang Qi had confessed, the subsequent procedures would still be quite tedious.

First, they needed to continue securing evidence.

For the deleted text messages, the electronic evidence lab had to recover the data to corroborate Yang Qi's confession, which the Procuratorate would present during public prosecution.

Once the evidence was secured, all the materials would be compiled and submitted to the Legal Affairs Division for review, and then forwarded to the Procuratorate.

Only after the Procuratorate approved it and prepared the arrest warrant for prosecution would the mission of the Criminal Investigation Division be considered complete.

If any link went wrong and the case was sent back, the Criminal Investigation Division would have to conduct supplementary investigations.

Han Ling wanted to say something but hesitated, boarding the car in silence.

Back at the precinct, Han Ling walked at the very back, then seized an opportunity to pull Fang Zhou aside to a secluded spot.

"What's wrong?" Fang Zhou asked, puzzled.

Han Ling said, "Brother Zhou, haven't you noticed anything off?"

"Off?" Fang Zhou didn't understand. "Regarding what?"

Han Ling: "Yang Qi's murder case."

Hearing this, Fang Zhou recalled the events, and after a long moment, spoke: "All the clues point to Yang Qi, the evidence points to Yang Qi, and Yang Qi himself has confessed. Is there anything off about that? Are you trying to say he's not the killer?"

"No," Han Ling shook his head. "I want to ask if there's any possibility that this case involves a second suspect."

These words made Fang Zhou instantly turn serious: "Explain."

Han Ling said: "Two points, Brother Zhou. See if they sound right to you.

First, apart from her nose and mouth, there were no other injuries on the body, and the signs of struggle seemed rather insignificant.

Second, just now during the interrogation of Yang Qi, I noticed he almost let something slip. He originally wanted to say [we], but slammed on the mental brakes and changed it to [I], pausing in the middle."

After listening carefully and pondering for a moment, Fang Zhou said: "Regarding the first point, a robust, middle-aged man murdering a frail woman using a quilt to cushion the force—it's not strange that a struggle didn't leave many injuries. Yang Qi himself also explained that he wrapped her in the quilt and used his entire body weight to press down on Hou Jiarou, making it extremely difficult for her to move freely.

As for the second point... are you sure you didn't see it wrong? I was staring right at Yang Qi and didn't notice anything at all. How about we review the interrogation recording later?"

He did not want to dampen Han Ling's enthusiasm and was very patient.

Han Ling: "Uh... I'm not entirely sure either. The change in lip shape was subtle, and the facial muscle movement wasn't obvious. Watching the interrogation recording probably won't help; it was just a flash of a moment, gone in a second, and impossible to verify repeatedly."

The interrogation footage wasn't that high-definition; face-to-face was the most authentic.

These truly might not count as suspicious points, but since he sensed something was wrong, he had to voice it.

Seeing this, Fang Zhou patted Han Ling's shoulder and encouraged him: "Having ideas is a good thing, but now the evidence and confessions are complete without any flaws. If you go to Team Leader Ji now with baseless suspicions, I'm afraid... he won't continue expending police resources on this.

How about this? If you really feel something is amiss, you can investigate it yourself, or re-interrogate Yang Qi. I support you, but it must be done with two people.

Organizing the case files takes time, and the Procuratorate's review also takes time—that should be enough. I hope you can resolve your own doubts.

If you have any problems, contact me anytime."

Han Ling could tell that Fang Zhou was expressing himself relatively tactfully, and certain realistic truths were not stated too directly.

He was merely a new police officer transferred from a local police station to the special investigation team. Although he had performed well over the past year and found key evidence in a homicide investigation, his weight within the force was still insufficient.

To put it bluntly, if the Chief of Police had suspicions, regardless of whether there was a basis for them, Ji Baiwei would undoubtedly throw all resources into the investigation.

Therefore, unless he could provide concrete supporting clues or find an entirely unreasonable flaw, he was advised not to voice doubts to Ji Baiwei.

The suspect had confessed and the evidence was complete; doing so would be equivalent to pouring cold water over the entire special investigation team for no reason.

"Alright, I understand," Han Ling nodded.

Fang Zhou's standing in the Criminal Investigation Division was not low; listening to him would not lead him astray.