Chapter 10
Chapter 10
“But right now, no one can prove what you’re saying,” Cao Lei said. “After you poured the wine into the decanter, did anyone else touch it?”
“I don’t know. After I finished getting everything ready for my wife, I went back to my room to sleep not long after. I have no idea what happened after that.”
“So, as things stand, you’re the only one who touched it.” Cao Lei explained patiently, his tone earnest. “Lao Pei, your fingerprints are the only ones on that decanter. They were only around the mouth of the bottle, but that’s enough to serve as evidence. Right now, almost all the evidence the police have points to you. Tell me honestly, was it because you found out about Bai Xue and Lu Dong’s affair, so you held a grudge and set all this up?”
“I didn’t.”
“Think carefully before you answer.”
“I really didn’t,” Pei Yuming said, growing anxious. “Even if I hated the two of them for it, why would I need to poison everyone else too? I’m not a monster. My brother, my father, and my daughter were all at that dinner table. Even if I wanted to poison someone, I would’ve made sure to avoid them!”
This was also the point the police cared about most. Even though they already had a relatively complete chain of evidence, it still could not fully prove that Pei Yuming had to be the one who committed the poisoning murder. The main reason was simple:
His motive was insufficient.
They had indeed discovered right away that his wife, Bai Xue, and Lu Dong were having an affair. If only those two had died tonight, then Pei Yuming would have had more than enough motive to kill.
But seven people had died. Among them were his father, his own younger brother, and his daughter.
If a man took out his anger over his wife’s affair with a friend on his blood relatives and unrelated outsiders, then unless he had an antisocial personality, no one with even a slightly normal mind would do something like that. It ran too far against ordinary behavioral logic.
There was another point. Assuming Pei Yuming really had planned to act because of Bai Xue and Lu Dong’s affair, for an adult man, poison would absolutely not have been his first choice.
Men’s instinctive thinking tended to rely on their own physical strength. Even in a premeditated murder, their first choice was usually violence. By contrast, if the perpetrator were a woman, poisoning might be considered first.
This was not speculation. It was supported by a large number of cases.
Because of that, before the case became clearer, even Cao Lei himself leaned more toward the idea that Pei Yuming was not the killer.
Of course, this was only conjecture. Whether Pei Yuming was the killer would ultimately depend on the investigation results. The difficult part was that they had no time.
Twenty-four hours was not necessarily enough to solve even an ordinary criminal case, let alone a major, complicated one like this.
Naturally, Cao Lei would never reveal that to a criminal suspect. He straightened slightly, putting some distance between himself and Pei Yuming, and his expression became noticeably more serious than before.
“Lao Pei, I won’t hide it from you. This case involves seven lives. The nature of it is extremely serious, and both the province and the City Bureau are paying close attention. We’ve already assigned a large number of people to the investigation. Maybe you don’t know much about modern criminal investigation methods, but I can tell you this: in the current environment, as long as someone has done something, they will leave traces behind. Surveillance footage, all kinds of transaction and information records, browsing history, even some offhand joke you happened to make to someone last week, we can find it. It’s only a matter of time. As a man, I understand how you feel, but there is a big difference with the police between confessing on your own and confessing only after you’re cornered. Do you understand?”
Pei Yuming immediately nodded. “I understand, but I really didn’t do it! Officer Cao, you have to believe me.”
Cao Lei silently studied him for a few seconds. “All right. Then for the rest of our conversation, I hope you won’t hide anything from us. Do your best to cooperate with the police. Can you do that?”
“I can!” Pei Yuming agreed with an extremely sincere expression.
Cao Lei patted him on the shoulder and stood up. “Good. Then rest for a bit first.”
With that, Cao Lei walked straight out without saying what he was going to do.
Pei Yuming watched him leave. After he was gone, the interrogation room fell into an unprecedented silence. Seeing that the officer across from him did not seem inclined to speak, Pei Yuming swallowed nervously. It was as if only now did he realize that he was, in fact, inside an interrogation room.
He did not even realize that in less than half an hour, he had somehow developed a sense of dependence on the very police officer responsible for interrogating him, without the slightest guard up.