Chapter 9

Chapter 9

When he returned to the mediation room again, Pei Yuming fell silent. From the moment he had stabbed Bai Xue to death with his own hands until now, this was the first chance he had to sort through what had happened in those last two rounds.

It was obvious now that being sent back to the interrogation room had nothing to do with time. Whether it was the murder last time or the fight this time, far more time had passed than during the first two attempts. That left only one trigger: anything related to the “dinner gathering.” More precisely, whenever he tried to stop the dinner gathering from happening, he would immediately enter a Flashback to the interrogation room.

And when he had killed Bai Xue, although he had not mentioned anything about the dinner gathering, Bai Xue was dead. Naturally, the gathering could no longer happen, so he had been sent back as well.

Then if he did not stop the dinner gathering, and did not hurt anyone, would he not have to come back?

With that thought, Pei Yuming began paying close attention to the time, his gaze drifting again and again to his watch.

Just like that, he forced himself to sit in silence in the mediation room for two full hours. By the end, he was almost asleep. In his haze, he seemed to hear a familiar voice ask him, “After you found out your wife was cheating, did you ever think about getting revenge on her?”

Pei Yuming thought, Actually, I haven’t thought about that yet.

“Lao Pei?” Officer Cao called him again. “Do you hate her?”

Pei Yuming raised a hand to block the glaring light and asked with certainty, “It’s nine sixteen right now, isn’t it?”

Cao Lei narrowed his eyes at him before saying, “It is.”

“At seven oh five tonight, the time I went to the bedroom to sleep, I came back again.”

Cao Lei worked to keep up with his logic. “You’re saying that this time, you stayed over there until seven oh five in the evening before coming back?”

“Yes.”

“You said earlier that you started eating at five thirty. Then when you went back this time, did you notice any details you missed before?” Although Cao Lei thought Pei Yuming’s talk of “Flashbacks” was complete nonsense, he had discovered that as long as he followed that line of questioning, Pei Yuming became highly cooperative, and was willing to reveal details Cao Lei wanted to know.

“No…” Pei Yuming had just started to shake his head when he stopped. Uncertain, he said, “We didn’t eat this time. We stayed at the police station until I came back. But there was one thing. My wife seemed especially afraid that I would check the elevator surveillance. It felt like she was hiding something from me.”

Cao Lei was silent for a moment, then took out his phone and showed it to Pei Yuming. “I’m guessing it was still this.”

In the video, a man and a woman entered the elevator one after the other. The timestamp showed 2:58 this afternoon. Until the elevator doors closed, both of them behaved normally. The moment the doors shut, the man pinned the woman against the wall. The two kissed and touched each other in the elevator, wrapped up in each other with no restraint.

The man was Lu Dong. The woman was his wife, Bai Xue.

What happened afterward went without saying.

Pei Yuming looked at the thin-strapped floral dress Bai Xue was wearing in the video, then remembered the short-sleeved shirt and jeans she had changed into when he came home. The veins on his forehead bulged again.

Cao Lei put away his phone and sat down beside Pei Yuming again. In a low voice, like an old friend he had known for years, he said, “Honestly, I can understand. When something like this happens, even the calmest person can’t guarantee they won’t lose control or do something extreme. So, Lao Pei, can you tell me how you got hold of the potassium cyanide?”

“…I never used potassium cyanide. It wasn’t me…” Pei Yuming denied it.

“But our forensic technicians found potassium cyanide crystals in your bedroom, stored in a vitamin bottle. The leftover red wine in the decanter also contained a lethal dose of potassium cyanide. There was poisoned wine remaining in all seven glasses on the table. You’ve seen the test report. All of them died of cyanide poisoning. And we also lifted your fingerprints from the decanter, the pill bottle, and the wine bottle.”

Cao Lei picked up the appraisal report and evidence bag from the table and handed them to Pei Yuming. “Look. These already form a very complete chain of evidence. To be honest, based on this alone, the court could prosecute you. Are you still not going to talk?”

The appraisal report was not hard for Pei Yuming to understand. After carefully flipping through it, panic finally crept into his expression. “But I really didn’t do it! I admit I opened that bottle of red wine, and I decanted it too, but my wife told me to. I didn’t take the initiative to do it.”