Chapter 2

Chapter 2

At this point, Chen Yin was deeply saddened, but overall, he remained calm. He still had control over his emotions.

I asked him, “Do you know where Zhong Ran dumped the body?”

After a moment of silence, he said, “I’m not sure.”

The colleagues who had gone to interview the other neighbors sent word back. Based on their feedback, Chen Yin’s account was mostly true.

Neighbors in the same building had often seen He Zhili seeking out Zhong Ran in private. As for whether it had been one-sided harassment on He’s part, the neighbors had differing opinions.

On the morning of the incident, a neighbor had indeed heard loud pounding on the door.

Combined with Chen Yin’s testimony, it was truly unusual that He Zhili, as a neighbor, could have such a poor sense of boundaries even after the couple had repeatedly hinted that he should keep his distance.

So I asked Chen Yin, “Was He Zhili normal when he interacted with you?”

Chen Yin said, “Completely normal.”

I continued, “When was the last time you saw He Zhili?”

“Last weekend. The day before he was killed. He asked me to go fishing with him.”

“Was there anything strange about him at the time?”

Chen Yin thought for a moment, then said, “All I remember is that halfway there, he brought up something from the past, about being on classroom duty as a child and wiping down the tiles at school. Before that, he rarely talked to me about our hometown.”

“Rarely talked to you about it?” I pressed. “From what you said earlier, He Zhili seemed to have told Zhong Ran quite a lot about his hometown.”

Chen Yin frowned. “There really wasn’t much worth reminiscing about from childhood. Maybe Zhong Ran was interested, so He Zhili told her more.”

I nodded. “Then tell me about the tile-wiping incident.”

“It has nothing to do with the case.”

I said, “It happened the day before the crime, after all. It may help us understand the victim’s state of mind before the incident.”

“All right.”

Chen Yin cooperated and began talking.

“He Zhili and I were in the same class in elementary school and the same school in middle school, but I wasn’t close to him back then. He paid a lot of attention to me, though, because his parents often praised my good grades in front of him.

“This happened in the first year of middle school. It wasn’t anything major. I just didn’t expect him to know about it too.

“One day in seventh grade, it was my turn to be on classroom duty.

“Because I was helping the teacher sort homework, I stayed a little later after school. The other students on duty had already finished cleaning, leaving me one wall of tiles outside the classroom to wipe down. It wasn’t much work.

“It was evening then. The teachers and students on that floor had all left. I was alone there, wiping the tiles.

“Ever since I was little, I hated losing. Whatever I did, I had to do it perfectly. Even with something like wiping tiles, I did it meticulously.

“I was thinking that when the grade-level inspection happened the next day, our class would definitely get extra points…”

At this point, Chen Yin stopped abruptly.

I asked, “And then?”

“Wait…” Chen Yin stared blankly for a moment, and his face instantly turned deathly pale. “Something isn’t right…”

“What isn’t right?” His reaction confused me.

His pupils trembled slightly, and his mind seemed to drift. He only muttered to himself, “I understand now…”

“What?”

“Sorry, Officer Lu. I’m tired. Let’s stop here for today.”

With that, Chen Yin got up and opened the door, asking us to leave.

The change had come so suddenly that my colleague and I were both stunned.

But no matter how much we pressed him, he said nothing else. He merely stood at the door with an icy posture, clearly seeing us out.

Naturally, we couldn’t just leave like that.

In truth, this witness interview wasn’t an ordinary visit. Since Chen Yin had close ties to both the victim and the suspect, we had intended to take some preliminary testimony from him, then bring him back with us.

I told him as much. He agreed readily, saying he would come with us after changing clothes, then turned and went into the bedroom.

We didn’t think much of it.

But after he went in, he didn’t come out for a very long time.

Aside from a faint, muffled zipper sound from inside the room at the very beginning, there was no other movement.

The bedroom door was locked from the inside. No matter how we knocked, there was no response, and we couldn’t kick it open either.

Sensing that something was wrong, we contacted our colleagues and the fire department while heading down to the first floor.

Immediately afterward, the irreversible incident of the witness jumping from the building occurred.

According to the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses, as well as the distance between the landing point and the building, it could be confirmed that Chen Yin had jumped purely to commit suicide. It had not been an accidental fall while attempting to flee.

He had jumped with the absolute determination to die.

Where had the problem been?

Could Chen Yin have been the real killer?

After Chen Yin entered the bedroom, the only sound that came out was that zipper sound. It hadn’t sounded like a clothing zipper, so what had it been?

…

The incident had happened too suddenly. My colleagues took over the follow-up work regarding Chen Yin’s suicide, while I drove back to the station first.

Along the way, I looked at the spiderweb cracks smashed into the windshield. My thoughts were in chaos for a long time before I managed to sort out a clue.

There was definitely something wrong with this case.

After all, at the start, Chen Yin had remained calm in the face of the unexpected. That had always been his way of handling things.

He had expressed complete concern for Zhong Ran, and at the same time, he had been very clear about his own position.

He knew that although he was closely connected to his wife, in this case, he was only an uninvolved observer, an outsider who only needed to provide testimony.

But when he remembered that childhood incident about wiping tiles, his position suddenly changed.

He became dazed and terrified, as though he had gone from an outsider to someone directly involved.

Clearly, the story Chen Yin hadn’t finished telling seemed irrelevant on the surface, but in reality, it was deeply connected.

And the effect of that incident had been extremely hidden. Not only had Chen Yin failed to notice anything wrong at first, even after he had already begun telling the story, he still hadn’t noticed. It was only halfway through that he realized something was off.

Now He Zhili and Chen Yin were both dead. The only person who might know the hidden truth was Zhong Ran.

I sped back to the station.