Chapter 77

Chapter 77

The police officer glared at Pei Yuming. “Don’t scare him!”

Pei Yuming looked at the young officer who had taken him away twice before and asked expressionlessly, “Officer, can you not contact my family?”

“Behave yourself!” the young officer snapped. “Since when do you get to tell us how to do our jobs? Whether we contact them or not isn’t up to you. Now you know how to worry? Where was that sense earlier?”

“I’m not worried. I just don’t want to see them.” Pei Yuming’s voice was lifeless and gloomy, giving him real potential to play a psychopathic killer in a TV drama. His gaze drifted, and he accidentally caught sight of the Man in Black again, frightening himself into another scream.

“Ah…!”

The officer beside him sighed, covered his ears, and pushed Pei Yuming’s face to the other side. “Turn around. You’re not allowed to talk facing this way anymore!”

Pei Yuming turned his head indifferently. His eyes settled on the traffic outside the window, and he persisted, asking again, “Can you, Officer?”

“No!” the officer refused flatly.

This time, Pei Yuming said nothing else. The police car turned with the flow of traffic, and before anyone could react, Pei Yuming suddenly unlocked the door, shoved it open without hesitation, and jumped out.

“!”

The others in the car watched as he fell to the ground. Before he could even get back up, a speeding SUV behind them struck him, sending him flying into the air before he crashed down again. Pei Yuming felt as though every bone in his body had shattered all over again. He could even feel warm blood flowing out of him, soaking through his clothes, wet and sticky.

Familiar screams rang out not far away. Through his blurring consciousness, he thought he heard the Man in Black’s miserable sobs.

Heh. So he knew fear too.

That was Pei Yuming’s final thought.

Cao Lei reminded him again, “Lao Pei? What exactly was your motive for murder?”

Pei Yuming rubbed his arm and flexed his numb fingers before saying, “I actually discovered a long time ago that my wife’s affair was with Lu Dong. I hated her. Why did she have to deceive me with the person I hated most? So I decided to kill them.”

“You hated Lu Dong? Weren’t you friends?”

“Yes. But I was jealous of him. Starting in university, he was more popular than I was. Whether with men or women, he always had the best relationships. I was clearly the one with the best grades, the one the teachers valued most.”

“After we started working, he used Su Jin’s connections to get even further ahead than before. And in a certain sense, he had actually become my superior.”

“Hmm?” Hearing this, even Cao Lei could not help feeling confused. He remembered that Lu Dong ran a private hospital. He had some work-related contact with Pei Yuming, but not much. How had he become Pei Yuming’s superior?

“The Su Family has investments in our hospital. He’s one of the board’s representatives, so he counts as my superior,” Pei Yuming explained on his own.

“You hated the two of them. Why poison everyone else too?” Cao Lei asked the question that had baffled him from the very beginning. In his view, aside from Bai Xue and Lu Dong, the things that had happened with the others were nowhere near enough to justify hatred from Pei Yuming’s perspective. If he wanted revenge, if he wanted to vent, he could have targeted only those two.

Pei Yuming was stumped by the question as well. He tilted his head and thought for a long while before saying, “Ever since I got married, Bai Xue was the one taking care of my dad and my younger brother. Whenever they needed anything, they usually went to her. Later, after my daughter was born, she was the one looking after her too. I didn’t know what they would do once Bai Xue was gone, so I could only poison them all together.”
“Just because of that?”

Obvious pain surfaced on Pei Yuming’s ashen face. First he nodded, then, as if remembering something, he shook his head and added, “And there were all the things they hid from me. I was furious about that too. In short, I couldn’t think straight for a moment, so I did it.”

If they insisted on explaining it that way, it barely made sense.

But Cao Lei was not satisfied. He kept feeling that Pei Yuming’s attitude was strange, so he asked again, “What about Su Jin and Lu Zixuan? The mother and son?”

“They…” Pei Yuming paused. “I… can only say they were unlucky. Everyone was eating at the same table. If only the two of them survived in the end, I wouldn’t have been able to explain it to you. To keep you from suspecting me, I had no choice but to make them drink it too.”

If Pei Yuming’s acting had been a ten when he made up those lies about the Flashback, Cao Lei could only give him a two for this confession of his motive for murder.

But he did not expose him right away. He was very curious about why Pei Yuming was so determined to confess, and whether this was actually part of his plan too.

Someone knocked on the interrogation room door again. A moment ago, Cao Lei’s superior had told him through his earpiece that they had found a new lead. It seemed the lead had arrived.

Cao Lei went to open the door himself. The person outside was the Chief Medical Examiner. He handed Cao Lei several reports, gave him a few brief instructions, and left.

Pei Yuming did not know what else the police had found, but he no longer cared. All he wanted was for them to arrest him as soon as possible, so he would not have to keep being dragged back and forth between the interrogation room and the subway.

Cao Lei placed the reports on the table, but he was in no hurry to show them to Pei Yuming. He sat back down across from him and asked, “One more thing. According to you, you’re the killer in this case. Then all those things you said before about the Flashback, you made them up too?”

Pei Yuming clearly had not expected Cao Lei to bring that up again. He froze for a moment before nodding. “Yes. I made it up. I originally wanted you to believe I was innocent.”

“So you already knew that Lu Zixuan was your biological son too?”

“Ah, yes!” Pei Yuming admitted. “But even though Lu Zixuan was mine by blood, I didn’t have much affection for the boy, so…”

Pei Yuming thought Cao Lei was questioning his motive because of this, so he took the initiative to explain.

But Cao Lei did not follow up on his words. Instead, he asked another question. “Aside from the things you mentioned earlier, do you know anything else?”

“What things?” Pei Yuming did not understand what he meant.

“Were they hiding anything else from you? Is there anything you haven’t told us?” Cao Lei asked, staring hard at him.

Pei Yuming glanced at Cao Lei, then lowered his head again, trying to avoid his gaze. He shook his head and said, “No.”

“Really?”

Pei Yuming clenched his fists. At this point, he did not want to go around telling people that Xiaobei was not his daughter. In any case, it did not matter whether Cao Lei and the other officers knew about it or not. He had already confessed that he was the killer.

“Yes. Really.”

Cao Lei picked up the top two reports from the stack he had placed on the table and handed them to Pei Yuming. “These two are your daughter’s and Su Jin’s autopsy reports. I’ll be direct. Your daughter was pregnant. You mentioned that before. But Su Jin was pregnant too. Did you know that?”

“What?!” Pei Yuming’s shock did not seem fake. He hurriedly took the reports and started flipping through them.

Cao Lei watched his expression closely and asked, enunciating every word, “Lao Pei, do you know whose child Su Jin was carrying?”