Chapter 172
Chapter 172
Song Xiaotian seemed to have grown used to this sort of thing.
“When the forest is big enough, you’ll find every kind of bird in it.”
“Let’s just wait for Officer Liu’s news. He’s an old hand. Since he promised to help us, he probably won’t let us down.”
I nodded and stopped complaining.
It was just that after seeing how pitiful Meng Yifan looked earlier, I really couldn’t hold it in.
This was fucking bullying, plain and simple.
Now that Meng Yifan had been arrested, there was no way he would be released after just forty-eight hours.
Drunk driving alone was enough for them to detain him for fifteen days without breaking a sweat.
That night, Song Xiaotian and I went back to Meng Yifan’s place. Seventh Master came too.
We were all waiting for news from Brother Liu.
Money really could motivate people.
Brother Liu had been terrified of getting dragged down with us, but after I offered three hundred thousand, he really did take the money and get things done. That very night, he brought us good news.
He had gotten the surveillance footage!
The footage came from the camera at the entrance of that villa. It clearly recorded what time Du Yunting went in and what time he came out. It also showed when Meng Yifan appeared at the entrance and when he disappeared from it.
We watched the entire clip carefully and wrote down the times both of them appeared on a piece of paper.
According to the footage, Du Yunting entered the villa at 11:20 p.m. and walked back out at 11:51 p.m.
Meng Yifan appeared at the villa entrance at 11:35. He stood there like a block of wood for five minutes, then left, disappearing from the front gate.
After watching the footage, all of us were dumbfounded.
From the time Du Yunting entered the villa to the time he came out, only thirty-one minutes had passed.
In thirty-one minutes, he first negotiated with Xiang Kai, trying to get Xiang Kai to drop out of the bidding. Then Xiang Kai refused. After that, he went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, hacked Xiang Kai to death, searched the entire villa, and only then killed Tao Xiaoyu.
Was that even possible?
In just thirty-one minutes, there was no way he could have done all of that.
The negotiation with Xiang Kai alone must have taken a while. With only thirty-one minutes total, he couldn’t possibly have had time left to kill Tao Xiaoyu.
In other words, he hadn’t killed Tao Xiaoyu at all!
“What the hell is going on…”
Song Xiaotian looked dazed. “If he didn’t have time to kill a second person, then how did Tao Xiaoyu die?”
Seventh Master also frowned and said, “There’s only one explanation. After Du Yunting killed Xiang Kai, he left. In that case, thirty-one minutes would be enough, and it would make sense.”
“But if he left, why did Tao Xiaoyu die? Unless after he left, someone else went in. That person didn’t enter through the front gate, but climbed over the wall, then killed Tao Xiaoyu.”
“So this murder case may very well have two killers.”
That conclusion left even me a little stunned.
Two victims. Two killers…
“Could it be… that Meng Yifan really did climb over the wall and go in?” Song Xiaotian looked at Seventh Master and me. “The police have seen this footage too, so that’s why they determined Meng Yifan was a major suspect. They might have simply pinned Xiang Kai’s murder on Meng Yifan as well.”
I hurriedly refuted him. “Impossible. Based on what I know about Meng Yifan, if he really had climbed over the wall and gone inside, he would have seen Xiang Kai’s body first. But he’s timid by nature. Unless someone was in a state of extreme rage, how could he possibly go on to madly hack another living person at the scene more than twenty times?”
“I think what happened might be this…”
I sorted through the logic and organized my words before saying, “The second killer may also have been after Xiang Kai. But he didn’t expect Xiang Kai to have already been killed. Then, at that exact moment, Tao Xiaoyu came out of a room and saw the second killer. Naturally, that person had to silence her.”
“So this person killed Tao Xiaoyu to silence her. But then he thought about it: he had clearly come to kill Xiang Kai, only for Xiang Kai to die one step ahead of him, and then, for no good reason, he’d killed someone else and saddled himself with a murder. So he stabbed Tao Xiaoyu more than twenty more times to create the illusion that the killer was the same person. That way, it would be very hard for the police to trace it back to him, and they also wouldn’t know there had been two killers that night.”
After I finished, Seventh Master and Song Xiaotian fell into thought for a while.
Seventh Master nodded. “That theory is very logical. If the killer wasn’t Xiao Meng, then the twenty-plus stab wounds on Tao Xiaoyu’s body are hard to explain. But if it was a second killer trying to muddy the waters, then it makes sense.”
I looked at Song Xiaotian again, but Song Xiaotian had his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed.
He seemed to disagree with my theory.
After a long while, he said, “According to you, the second killer was also there for Xiang Kai. That means he went there with premeditated intent to kill. And he didn’t use the front door. He climbed over the wall because he was afraid of being recorded by the camera at the front entrance. Since he was that afraid, then the roads throughout the whole villa complex also have surveillance, the main gate of the community has surveillance, and the streets outside the community have surveillance too. There was no way he could avoid all those cameras.”
“So he must have been wearing a hat and a mask to cover his face. In that case, even if Tao Xiaoyu saw him, she wouldn’t know what he looked like. Would he really have had to kill Tao Xiaoyu just to silence her?”
I said, “He didn’t necessarily have to silence her. He could have, or he could have chosen not to. So even if he did kill her, it’s still explainable. There’s nothing that doesn’t fit.”
Song Xiaotian clapped his hands once. “Fine. Let’s go with what you said and assume this is the entire sequence of events. But what if we change the second killer’s purpose? What if he was there for Tao Xiaoyu herself, not Xiang Kai? Don’t you think that would be more reasonable? That it would make more sense?”
Seventh Master and I were both stunned. Thinking it over carefully, it did seem more reasonable.
But whether the second killer had come for Xiang Kai or Tao Xiaoyu was entirely our own conjecture. There was no logic to support it.
At that moment, Song Xiaotian added, “There’s also another detail here. This villa belonged to Tao Xiaoyu, and it was where Tao Xiaoyu and Xiang Kai met in secret. A place like that would definitely be kept confidential. Not just anyone would know this villa existed, and not just anyone would know that Tao Xiaoyu and Xiang Kai happened to be inside this villa that night.”
“Unless this person was either someone close to Xiang Kai or someone close to Tao Xiaoyu. And this person paid very close attention to the private lives of those two adulterers. On top of that, this person came here specifically to kill. Tell me, what kind of motive for murder would that be?”
I blurted out, “A crime of passion!”
There were only two people who could have such a motive. One was Meng Yifan, who loved Tao Xiaoyu deeply. The other, of course, would be a woman who loved Xiang Kai deeply. Who could that be?
“Xiang Kai’s wife!”
Seventh Master and Song Xiaotian said it at the same time.
The three of us almost slapped our thighs at the same moment, utterly fired up. “It’s Xiang Kai’s wife! Xiang Kai’s wife wanted Tao Xiaoyu dead!”
Xiang Kai’s wife was just a woman. She probably wasn’t badass enough to dare kill someone personally. She must have hired someone else to kill Tao Xiaoyu.
With that, we had another breakthrough!