Chapter 80

Chapter 80

“Then why did it show up in the test?” Cao Lei deliberately tossed the question back at him. “And when we examined the scene, we didn’t find any bottled sleeping pills in your home. That’s strange, too.”

Only then did Pei Yuming realize he had answered too honestly just now. But at this point, there was no way to walk it back.

All he could do was stay silent.

Seeing that he wasn’t talking, Cao Lei didn’t press him. Instead, he delivered another light, casual blow. “Also, after the incident, there was actually wine in your glass on the table. But you said you washed the glass. How do you explain that?”

Pei Yuming looked at Cao Lei in astonishment, as if the person he trusted most had conned him out of the last dime in his pocket. “But… but you said my glass was empty.”

Cao Lei nodded with complete confidence. “Right, I did say that. But you didn’t contradict me. You went along with it and kept making things up. Why?”

Pei Yuming had never imagined that Cao Lei, who looked so honest and upright, could act all buddy-buddy with him while casually leading him straight into a pit. Even though he was still trapped deep in his own despondency, he felt a stifling sense of having been emotionally deceived.

So the stifled Pei Yuming decided to stop caring altogether. He shot Cao Lei a resentful look and said, “Because I’m not the killer at all. I said all that on purpose before. I lied to you.”

“What?! Say that again!” Cao Lei exploded on the spot, his anger instantly maxing out. The nice-guy act was gone completely. “Pei Yuming, what the hell is going through your head? Where do you think you are? This is a police station. You think all these people are here in the middle of the night just to play around with you?”

Pei Yuming shrank into himself under the roar and explained with a trembling, downturned mouth, “I-I didn’t think you’d realize I was lying. I thought once I confessed, you’d ask a few routine questions and it would be over. But I really can’t keep making it up. I honestly didn’t kill anyone. Before, I was just in so much pain that I couldn’t think straight, so I took the blame…”

Cao Lei was so furious his head was buzzing. Outside the interrogation room, the conference room was about to erupt as well. Two hot-tempered officers were already getting to their feet, ready to charge over and have a word with Pei Yuming, only for Wei Zheng to bark them back down.

Lin Zhiwei had been raising her hand for ages without anyone noticing. Finally, when the arguing in the conference room dipped to its lowest, she said, “Excuse me, may I say something?”

Wei Zheng was desperate for someone to offer a practical suggestion right now. He immediately tapped his fountain pen against the tabletop, and the noisy conference room fell silent at once.

“Everyone listen to Professor Lin. Stop arguing for now!”

Under everyone’s gaze, Lin Zhiwei picked up the remote again and rewound the video on the big screen. “Do you all still remember the baseline I mentioned earlier, for when the suspect is telling the truth?”

“I remember,” Wei Zheng said first. “When he looks down to the lower left, you said it’s more likely he’s telling the truth, right?”

“Mm.” Lin Zhiwei nodded. “Look here. This is the footage of him describing the murder process after confessing. His gaze first stopped on the mineral water bottle to the left-”

“Ah!” Before she could finish, a criminal police officer sitting closest to the screen cut in. “The left. It’s the left. What he said was true! He really did kill them!”

Lin Zhiwei good-naturedly pressed her hand down, then let the video run for another three seconds before pausing it again. “What about now?”

In the video, when Pei Yuming said the second sentence, his head had already turned slightly. His gaze swept unconsciously away from the water bottle and finally landed on his own right hand, in the exact opposite direction from the beginning.
“This…”

Lin Zhiwei did not explain. She kept playing the video until Pei Yuming’s gaze landed on the water bottle again.

“Here. He glances to the left again.” She marked it with the laser pointer.

Then she continued playing the video. This time, Pei Yuming’s eyes either lowered toward the partition or wandered between his right hand and the floor on his right. Lin Zhiwei played and paused it like that, pointing out the key moments to everyone. By the time the video ended, several quick-witted veteran detectives had gradually understood what she was getting at, and looks of realization appeared on their faces.

“Did everyone notice?” Lin Zhiwei captured the three frames where Pei Yuming’s gaze had clearly shifted left and played them again. “When he answered the question about when the wine was decanted, why he hated Lu Dong, and his relationship with Su Jin, his gaze clearly dipped down to the lower left. At the same time, both his facial expressions and body movements decreased significantly.”

“And if we remove those three sections, what remains is exactly everything he told Captain Cao about his motive and the process of committing the murder. When he was talking about those things, the movement of his gaze basically stayed fixed in the lower and right-side areas. His facial expressions and small body movements also increased visibly. Judging from that reaction, it is very likely that all of that was false.”

“Wait, that doesn’t make sense, does it?” a detective immediately questioned. “When he was describing the murder process, didn’t he look to the left at the very beginning?”

Lin Zhiwei said, “Yes, because his first sentence was, ‘My wife asked me to decant the two bottles of wine Lu Dong brought.’ He mentioned that sentence repeatedly before he confessed, so it can basically be confirmed as true. But when he later said he put potassium cyanide inside, his gaze drifted to the right. That means only the first sentence of that section was true. Everything after that was made up.”

“So what are you saying?” Zhou Zheng could not help asking. He still did not quite understand what Lin Zhiwei was trying to express.

“Judging from the suspect’s reactions in the video, from the start of the interrogation until now, the only time he showed obvious signs of lying was after he confessed. Can we therefore infer that the confession itself is false? That would explain why his statement became inconsistent after he started giving his account.”

“That can’t be right.” Zhou Zheng found the conclusion a little hard to accept. “Who would mess around like that? This is a matter of life and death…”

Lin Zhiwei sighed, her eyes falling on the big screen. In the footage, Pei Yuming was still explaining to Cao Lei the thought process that had led to his confession.

“…”

The conference room gradually sank into an eerie silence. Finally, someone could not hold back and cursed under their breath.

Someone beside them quietly suggested, “Professor Lin, do you think he could have designed all of this? Maybe he was afraid we wouldn’t believe the Flashback story, so he staged this too, just to make us turn around and question ourselves?”

Clearly, faced with a suspect this unhinged, any normal person’s mind was about to be dragged off course by him.

Lin Zhiwei shook her head. “You all saw it just now. Captain Cao’s entire line of questioning was very tight and gave the suspect almost no time to react. In that kind of high-pressure context, whether the suspect is telling the truth or lying, his facial expressions and body language are subconscious. Even someone who has received specialized training would find it very difficult to fake those things. Also, as for this suspect’s personality… how should I put it? Judging from his behavior, he is not the deeply calculating type. If he really did design all of this, then perhaps my skill level simply isn’t high enough to see through it.”