FBH Chapter 10

At this moment, Wu Shuqi and two video investigators were sitting in front of the property’s computer, intently reviewing surveillance footage.

The reasons for their arguments almost always revolved around their fractured marriage. Xiong Zhiyang believed that Lü Yuchan and Li Yuehua had an improper relationship, which Lü Yuchan vehemently denied, even demanding that Xiong Zhiyang produce evidence of her affair. Additionally, their disputes involved a failure to reach an agreement on the division of marital property.

“It seems that this Xiong Zhiyang is highly suspected of committing the crime!” Wu Shuqi muttered to herself.

However, she believed that she, with her ten years of experience as a police officer, and her video investigation colleagues, all had sharp eyes. No matter how skilled Xiong Zhiyang’s disguise was, they would make it impossible for him to hide.

The staircase surveillance video of the involved unit building shows that since Li Yuehua bought cola and returned home on the evening of July 14th until after the incident, besides Li Yuehua and the three victims associated with this case, only three renovation workers, one locksmith, one middle-aged man, and one middle-aged woman entered the seventh floor.

The renovation workers were called over for identification. The woman was the owner of the house being renovated, and the middle-aged man was the boss of the renovation workers’ company.

Logically, they had no motive to commit the crime.

Wu Shuqi thought that the next step of the investigation should focus on the personnel entering and exiting the elevator.

It is worth mentioning that while browsing the surveillance footage, Wu Shuqi found an anomaly: there was no video image during the period from 11:32 to 4:41 on July 15th. She asked the property management and learned that there was a power outage at that time.

In Wu Shuqi’s memory, Jincheng was shrouded in dark clouds that day, and it even rained a little around three or four o’clock in the afternoon.

The reason she remembered it so clearly was because that day she drove to the home of an orphan fifty miles away to send warmth, and she took money out of her own pocket to give the orphan’s grandmother 2,000 yuan. The child’s parents were killed by robbers two years ago, and that case was solved by her and her colleagues. At the time of the incident, the child was not yet seven years old. After that, he lived with his grandmother, who was in poor health. Although the government helped him and his grandmother with subsistence allowances, most of the monthly subsistence allowances were used by the grandmother to see a doctor and get medicine. The family was very poor. Wu Shuqi sympathized with the grandmother and grandson very much and had donated money and goods to their family many times in her personal capacity.

In addition, it is not ruled out that Xiong Zhiyang hired a murderer. Without knowing what the murderer looks like and when the murderer sneaked into Li Yuehua’s home to commit the crime, it is not easy to make a breakthrough in the investigation work.

The case was complicated, and there were many clues. Wu Shuqi felt dizzy and raised her arms to rub her temples with the index and middle fingers of both hands. Whenever she encountered a difficult case, she would habitually rub her temples with her hands.

Wu Shuqi asked the video investigators to copy the video and bring it back to the bureau for a closer look. She then prepared to go to the scene of the incident to take a look, hoping that her colleagues in the Technical Section would have new discoveries on the scene investigation.

She took the elevator downstairs.

“Are there any other discoveries? For example, traces of the suspect’s shoe prints.” Wu Shuqi looked at Wang Xi with anticipation.

After a pause, he said: “On the other hand, three sets of clear shoe prints were extracted from the empty room that was not damaged much in the scene. There are adult shoe prints and minor shoe prints, male shoe prints and female shoe prints, which should belong to Li Yuehua, Ning Yaohong and their son. Of course, our Technical Section will also identify the shoe prints to eliminate suspicion. Also, Xiao Zhang and I searched the entire house and did not find any cyanide substances.”

Xiao Zhang was also a forensic investigator. He nodded at Wu Shuqi.

Although this result was within Wu Shuqi’s expectation, she still sighed in disappointment and said: “I and several colleagues from the Criminal Investigation Team once suspected that the murderer, after discovering the victim’s death, re-entered the room to turn on the gas stove and gas cylinder valve in order to create the illusion that the victim died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“But by viewing the surveillance video, no suspicious person was found entering or exiting the floor in the few hours after the fire occurred. Why were the gas stove and gas cylinder valve turned on? I guess it may be that Ning Yaohong forgot to turn it off when she used it, or it may be that her ignorant son turned it off, which coincidentally made our police associate it with the murderer.”

Wang Xi agreed with her view.

“That’s good, that’s good.” The master breathed a sigh of relief.

“This is important evidence, of course we need it!” Wu Shuqi then said to Lu Tianhai, “I’ll go and get it with the master in a while.”

Lu Tianhai responded: “Okay.”

Wu Shuqi routinely asked the master if he had found anything abnormal about the victims, mother and son, and if there were any other people in the room (the suspicion of the several renovation workers had not been completely ruled out, so she asked this). The master answered them one by one. Without obtaining any valuable information, Wu Shuqi let the master leave.

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