latelenovela Chapter 999 Interrogation of Qin Dahu
Chapter 999 Interrogation of Qin Dahu
In the video, Zhang Peng's voice trembled: "If something happens to me, this will be the evidence. Qin Dahu wants to kill us to silence us because he knows Xiaoman is pregnant with my child..." The video suddenly shook violently, with sounds of fighting and Li Xiaoman's cries coming through, before finally freezing on Qin Dahu's ferocious face.
Li Ming clenched his fist: "Close the net!" The sound of sirens pierced the night sky as dozens of police cars rushed toward Qin Dahu's villa.
The interrogation room was brightly lit by incandescent bulbs. Qin Dahu sat cross-legged on a stainless steel interrogation chair, the toes of his crocodile-skin shoes tapping rhythmically on the floor. He wore a custom-made suit, and the golden dragon tattoo on his neck was faintly visible as he swallowed. Facing the surveillance camera outside the one-way glass, a faint, cold smile always lingered on his lips.
"Mr. Qin, tell me where you were on the night of November 14th?" Li Ming opened the folder, but his gaze remained fixed on the other person's face.
"I can't remember." Qin Dahu reached into his suit's inner pocket, the cuffed wrists making a crisp clinking sound. "Businessmen have a lot of social obligations." His answer was carefully crafted, each word trailing off, as if he were savoring the power in his words.
Xiao Wang slammed the evidence bag heavily on the table. The blood-stained wrench gleamed a bluish hue in the cold light: "Zhang Peng's DNA and your fingerprints were found on this."
"With so many workers in my company, who knows if they took my tools?" Qin Dahu raised an eyebrow. "Officer, can you handle the charge of framing someone?" He suddenly leaned closer to the table, the scent of cologne mixed with cigars wafting towards him. "Besides, Zhang Peng is my most capable subordinate. Why would I kill him?"
Li Ming pulled up Li Xiaoman's pregnancy test report and pushed it over: "Because he wants to run away with his pregnant girlfriend, and you're afraid he'll expose the company's underground money laundering business." The scene shifts, and the surveillance footage of Qin Dahu's Maybach appearing three times in the urban village begins to play on a loop.
Qin Dahu's pupils contracted slightly, but he quickly regained his composure: "I admit I went there to discuss business. Zhang Peng did borrow money from me before he disappeared, saying his girlfriend was seriously ill." He picked up his water glass and took a sip. "I was just trying to help, and now I'm a suspect?"
The interrogation lasted for seven hours, and Qin Dahu began frequently requesting to see a lawyer. Li Ming suddenly changed the subject: "Do you know the head of the radiology department at the municipal hospital?" When the fabricated CT images and the 200,000 yuan transfer record were presented to him, Qin Dahu finally put down his water glass.
"I just wanted to make that woman back down." He loosened his tie, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. "Zhang Peng threatened me with company secrets, saying he'd take Li Xiaoman to turn himself in." The words had barely left his mouth when he realized his mistake, abruptly shutting his mouth, his nails digging deeply into his palms.
"So you had your henchmen lure Zhang Peng to the warehouse first?" Xiao Zhou interjected at the opportune moment, pulling up the warehouse's bloodstain analysis report. "The luminol reaction on the cement floor showed that there had been over 2000 ml of blood loss there, enough to kill an adult male."
Qin Dahu suddenly sprang to his feet, the handcuffs slamming against the table with a loud thud: "These are all fakes you've made!" But the cold sweat on his forehead and his involuntary trembling left hand had already betrayed his inner panic. When the video Zhang Peng had secretly filmed began to play, he finally calmed down—in the video, he was holding a wrench and smashing it against the back of Zhang Peng's head, while Li Xiaoman's cries could be heard from off-screen.
"The video can be edited!" he tried to explain, but his voice was clearly weak. Li Ming then produced the henchman's autopsy report: "The henchman died of digoxin poisoning, and your personal doctor happens to be an expert in prescribing this drug."
At three in the morning, Qin Dahu's defenses began to crumble. Staring at the digital clock on the wall of the interrogation room, he suddenly muttered to himself, "They forced me into this... Zhang Peng knew too much." He recounted that rainy night: Zhang Peng stormed into the office with Li Xiaoman's pregnancy test results, threatening to report all the money laundering evidence to the police. "I only wanted to teach him a lesson," Qin Dahu said, grabbing his hair, "but he resisted too fiercely..."
When the topic of Li Xiaoman's death came up, he suddenly fell silent. Under continued pressure from Li Ming, he finally spoke: "Li Xiaoman saw Zhang Peng's body; I couldn't let her leave alive." He described how he lured Li Xiaoman to the top floor of the warehouse, smothered her with chloroform to make it look like she was falling from a great height.
"And tell me, how did you manage to bury the body?"
Qin Dahu's fingers gripped the edge of the interrogation chair tightly, the metal scraping against the leather with a harsh sound. His Adam's apple bobbed twice before he spoke in a hoarse voice: "By the time we finished disposing of their bodies, it was almost dawn. I had my henchman rent a van from a junkyard on the outskirts of the city. We stuffed Zhang Peng's body into a woven bag, and wrapped Li Xiaoman in a bed sheet—she was so light; when I picked her up, I could even feel her bony frame."
As the truck bumped and jolted towards the construction site, Qin Dahu kept his eyes glued to the rearview mirror. The streets were deserted at three in the morning, only the streetlights casting pale shadows on the truck windows. "I've had my eye on that land for two years. I knew it was going to be developed into a housing complex. I figured once the buildings were up, the secret would be buried forever under the concrete." He suddenly laughed, a laugh bordering on maniacal. "Who would have thought the police would arrive before the foundation was even laid?"
Upon arriving at the construction site, the henchman was in charge of digging, while Qin Dahu guarded the body. "The soil was too hard; sparks flew as the shovel struck," he gestured, his handcuffs clanging against the table. "When we reached two meters deep, the henchman said that was enough, but I felt it wasn't deep enough. Finally, we dug another half meter down and threw Zhang Peng's body in first—the blood from the back of his head had clotted and stuck to the woven bag, impossible to tear off."
When Li Xiaoman's body was placed above Zhang Peng, Qin Dahu paused for a long time. "I positioned her hands as if she were crossing her arms, thinking... thinking of letting her leave with some dignity." His voice suddenly choked, but he quickly masked it with a cold laugh. "It's all an act, I know." When the soil was being added, I deliberately had my henchmen throw it at her first. Only when the yellow earth covered her face did I truly breathe a sigh of relief.
During the backfilling process, the truck's headlights suddenly flashed twice. "The henchman said it looked like someone was there," I said, my legs went weak with fear. Qin Dahu's pupils contracted sharply, as if he were back in that terrifying night. "Later it turned out to be a stray cat, but my back was already soaked with sweat." The remaining soil was filled in haphazardly, and the turf wasn't laid properly; I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Before leaving, Qin Dahu made one last decision. "I ripped the button off Zhang Peng's hand—it was from the shirt Li Xiaoman had given him for his birthday. He pulled out a non-existent cigarette from his pocket, his fingers hovering in the air. I thought about keeping it as a memento, but I was afraid of being discovered, so I finally put it back in his hand."