While I was conversing with the old man from the winter swim team, the flash beside us hadn’t stopped. Guan Zhenglin was organizing people to wrap up the body in the body bag. After the ‘explosion’ earlier, the stomach had shrunk a lot. The rotten air had been released.
Over the past few minutes, the crowd gasped and wailed with us. With my estimation, this whole salvage mission would be shared on all social media within minutes. But there was nothing we could do to stop it. In fact, I couldn’t even tell why things would suddenly get so viral.
The public was a temperamental creature. Today they might be discussing the murder video but tomorrow they would move onto another thing; today they might insist on justice for the ‘victim’, Du Zigui, but tomorrow, they would forget about everything. The public opinion changed like the flip of a coin. So such an intense release of consecutive news was probably planned by someone.
I asked the witness, “Did you see anyone suspicious when you were here?”
The old man thought about it. “Actually now that you mentioned it, when we were drilling the holes, someone came to ask me what we were doing. I told him it was for the winter swim. He asked me for the date of the event, and I told him it was going to be held one week later. I even invited him to come, but he told me he couldn’t join because his arm is injured… Then he left.” The old man worked his shoulders. “As he walked away, he mumbled to himself, ‘this is a good place’. Honestly I had no idea what he was yapping about.”
“There was an injury on his arm?” I asked seriously, “He told you that?”
The old man nodded, “He even tapped his left arm to stress it, he seemed proud of it.”
Well that was suspicious. Who would go around telling people their arm was injured? Now that I think about it, this has happened more than once. But why would Zhang Bin do that? Going around places and purposely letting people know that his arm was injured. It was like he was afraid that people wouldn’t know he was Zhang Bin.
From the available witness and evidence, everything pointed towards Zhang Bin. Even Cheng Yimin, Zheng Shuai and the restaurant boss could prove that it was Zhang Bin who coerced Du Zigui to go and rape Fang Xiao Qi, and Zhang Bin defense was that, it was a drunken joke.
Zhao Xiaoli couldn’t tell if the person who raped her was Zhang Bin but Zhang Bin’s fingerprint was found at the place that imprisoned her. There was no third set of fingerprints. Zhang Bin was the culprit.
From Du Zigui’s video and his body, they both also verified these statements.
The boss of Serendipity Internet Café also confirmed that Zhang Bin had said he would ruin Hao Ren’s family and burn down his house. Zhang Bin argued that he only said those in the heat of the moment. He had done none of those things. The circumstantial evidence against him was as high as a mountain.
However, at the same time, we couldn’t find any concrete evidence to prove Zhang Bin was the culprit either. This was truly confusing, was Zhang Bin was the evil mastermind or someone was trying to pin this on him?
The internet provided a clear answer, everyone wanted Zhang Bin to die even though there was no concrete evidence. This was already a public lynching. When we left, someone led the crowd to chant, “Truth, we want the truth, we will not rest until we have the truth!”
Seeing the crowd that refused to disperse from the rearview mirror, I was both happy and sad, happy because they were so adamant to know the truth; sad because they probably didn’t really care about the truth.
We soon returned to the station. Mary was narrowing down the internet tracks of the video poster and was shocked to realize the IP came from Dong Xing City. It was a 4 hour car ride from Elm Town to Dong Xing City. This video was released less than 3 hours ago. In other words, the poster was still in Dong Xing City. However both Du Zigui and Zhang Bin were locals at Elm Town, why would someone at Dong Xing City release this video?
Captain Zhao sighed, “Are we Conan? Everywhere we go, people will die?”
I chuckled, “Where there are people, there will be death. In our world, there are 8 deaths every second and 106 deaths every minute. It is just that most people don’t realize it and most stay away from death. But perhaps the person you cross on the street, they would die that very day.”
Captain Zhao said, “I’ll bring people back to Dong Xing City with me to investigate this video uploader. Then I’ll go and look around the city council, our exile shouldn’t last this long.”
Everyone nodded.
Guan Zhenglin, “In that case, I'll conduct the autopsy.” The body was placed on the autopsy table. Gu Chen was still fidgety around this body, after all, he almost died because of it.
As Guan Zhenglin put on her gloves and mask, she observed the body. Before she cut open the body, she commented, “You saw how bloated the body was yourself. Considering the fact that it’s winter, he would have been submerged in the water for around 4 or 5 days already.”
4 or 5 days, that matched the time stamp on Zhang Bin’s video. In other words, Du Zigui did go and find Zhang Bin after he finished recording the video. But how did Du Zigui lose to Zhang Bin when Zhang Bin was already wounded. Was Du Zigui so weak that he couldn’t overpower the single-handed Zhang Bin?
Suddenly something flashed in my brain.
Guan Zhenglin started the autopsy. “I doubt the drug still remains in the body but I’d advise you two to put on the protective suit. He was a new drug addict. One day you should go and see the internal organs of a long term addict, their organs are basically in pieces…”
Gu Chen turned his head away, looks like he still had trauma. I put on the protective gear and walked forward to take a closer look. Guan Zhenglin worked on the skinny yet ‘bloated’ body. She worked for half an hour before she said, “See the strangulation mark on his neck?”
There was indeed one around Du Zigui’s neck. It didn’t look deep. I nodded. “Is it fatal?”
Guan Zhenglin shook her head. “That’s the strange part. The wound is not nearly deep enough to be fatal. Plus the direction of the force is also questionable, it goes down.”
“Questionable?” I asked.
Guan Zhenglin asked me to simulate the situation with her. She faked tying a rope around my neck and then pulled downwards. In that case, my body would naturally lean downwards unless of course we were standing back to back and she used her own body as leverage. But this reminded me of another problem. Zhang Bin’s left arm was weak. If he did strangle Du Zigui, the strangulation mark shouldn’t look like this. The mark should be lighter on the left side but that was not the case. In other words, it was not Zhang Bin who left this mark behind. “The direction is not right!” I concluded.
Guan Zhenglin smiled before she added, “So you better pay attention during the autopsy.” She used the scalpel to slice through the body’s lung. With a small cut, water gushed out from the lungs. Guan Zhenglin used the tip of the scalpel to point at bits of green. “See those things? Those are water algae, plus there is too much water in the lungs, this can only mean that he was dropped into the water when he was still alive.” Guan Zhenglin used the scalpel to press on the kidney and pancreas. “From the deterioration of these two organs, it is clear that this man was a drug addict but his drug usage history was not long or else the signs of organ failure would be much clearer. In conclusion, he died around noon 4 days ago.”
Gu Chen said from the side, “Isn’t that right around the time Zhang Bin went to change his bandage? Probably Du Zigui did go to the hospital but he was noticed by Zhang Bin. Zhang Bin led him to the river and then overpowered him with the rope before kicking him into the water.”
I said, “But Du Zigui was still conscious when he was underwater. Do you remember the grooves you saw on the other side of the ice? How do you think they got there?”
“Du Zigui dug them out himself?” Gu Chen guessed.
I said, “If he has the time to do that, why not swim to the ice hole to escape?”
“Then what happened?” Gu Chen frowned.
I looked at the body on the table. “Is there a possibility that Du Zigui wasn’t killed by Zhang Bin but he killed himself?”
“A suicide?” They both asked.
I nodded seriously. “Yes, Zhang Bin is the cause of everything and his death will also end everything. They really want Zhang Bin to die. Without Zhang Bin, nothing would have happened. I believe the climax of this performance is coming soon.”
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