latelenovela Chapter 929 The Real Crime Process, Scene Identification
Chapter 929 The Real Crime Process, Scene Identification
“Wrong,” Lin Wanqing suddenly said, “It wasn’t Ah Zhong who did it, it was me.” She raised her hand, showing the bruise on her wrist, “He scratched me when he struggled, and in a fit of anger…” Her voice trailed off, “The wire was taken from the warehouse of Jinshi Financial. Chang Baofeng had received it before, so we can shift the suspicion to her.”
Li Ming stared into her eyes: "Why are you framing your sister? She helped you launder money, yet you want her to take the blame?"
"Because she's greedy!" Lin Wanqing suddenly screamed. "She said she wanted a share of the profits, wanted to buy a house and get married, and even wanted to take my place next to my husband!" She gasped for breath. "Anyway, she's never met my husband. The police will only find out about her relationship with Guo Jianfeng. Who would suspect me?"
“So you deliberately left behind the red dress, earrings, and transfer records,” Li Ming shook his head, “but you didn’t expect that Chang Baofeng really entrusted Guo Jianfeng with managing her finances. The 50 yuan was a clean investment, which actually cleared her of suspicion.”
Lin Wanqing's shoulders slumped, as if all her strength had been drained away: "I thought everything was foolproof... Guo Jianfeng, that idiot, even on his deathbed he said, 'For Wanqing's sake, let me go.' He never knew that I was the one who would take his life."
The interrogation room fell into a deathly silence, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock. Lin Wanqing stared down at her pearl earrings, then suddenly reached out and ripped them off, throwing them into the trash can: "These earrings were a gift from him, saying they'd 'match my red dress.' It's disgusting."
"Does your husband know?" Li Ming asked softly.
"Him?" Lin Wanqing sneered. "He only cares about when the money from the coal mine can be laundered; he doesn't even know my sister exists." She suddenly burst into tears, her makeup ruined. "I've done so much for him, and he's keeping a mistress on the side..."
At three in the morning, Lin Wanqing finally confessed to all the details of the crime. Li Ming looked at the densely written handwriting on the record and remembered the couple's watch on Guo Jianfeng's desk—it turned out that "JL" wasn't "Jianfeng" and "Baofeng," but rather "Jianfeng" and "Wanqing." This discovery made him feel nauseous, both for Guo Jianfeng's stupidity and for Lin Wanqing's ruthlessness.
“Lin Wanqing,” Li Ming closed the notebook, “did you think you could cover up the truth with the red dress and the nickname ‘Old Ghost’? But every crime leaves a trace, just like the pearl powder under your fingernails, which will eventually expose your crimes.”
Lin Wanqing raised her head, her eyes vacant: "Captain Li, why do you think people are greedy?" She laughed self-deprecatingly, "Because once they've tasted the sweetness, they can never give it up."
As we stepped out of the interrogation room, Xiao Zhang handed me a cup of hot coffee: "Captain Li, what about Chen Guisheng..."
“Let’s hand it over to the Economic Crime Investigation Department,” Li Ming said, gazing at the morning light outside the window. “Money laundering, murder—these two have enough to keep you busy for a long time.”
Three days later, at 10 a.m., the rooftop of the Jinshan Building in Dongchuan City was completely cordoned off. Lin Wanqing stood in front of the iron gate, handcuffed, looking up at the familiar scene. Her pearl earring had been removed, replaced by a pale earlobe. She wore the gray prison uniform provided by the police, her steps unsteady as she stepped over the police tape stickers on the ground, as if each step was measuring her own sins.
“Lin Wanqing, we need you to cooperate in identifying the crime scene now,” Li Ming said sternly, standing behind her. “Tell us every detail truthfully.”
Lin Wanqing nodded, her gaze falling on the distant railing where fluorescent traces of luminol reagent still lingered. She took a deep breath and said, "At noon on March 12th, I had Ah Zhong deliver a cup of coffee with diazepam to Guo Jianfeng at the 'Cloud Western Restaurant.' After drinking it, he said he felt dizzy, so I lied and said I was going to the rooftop for some fresh air..."
She walked slowly toward the fence, her leather shoes stopping near the bloodstain mark: "He leaned against this and said, 'Sister Wanqing, I don't want to earn that money anymore.' I asked him if he wanted to report me, but he didn't say anything." Lin Wanqing stretched out her right hand, simulating a shoving motion, "I grabbed his collar, and he scratched my face when he struggled. The skin under his fingernails must have been from that moment."
"And then?" Xiao Zhang raised the camera, focusing the lens on her hand gestures.
“Then Ah Zhong came up the fire escape,” Lin Wanqing pointed to the stairwell, “we pinned him against the railing together, and Ah Zhong took out an electrical cord and wrapped it around his neck…” She suddenly choked up, “He didn’t have much strength left at that point, he just grabbed my wrist with his hands, kicked his feet wildly on the ground, and knocked over the fire extinguisher next to him…”
Li Ming gestured to the technician to record the location of the fire extinguisher, where there were indeed obvious signs of it being overturned. Lin Wanqing continued, "He was strangled for about five minutes, then he stopped moving."
The identification process lasted two hours, with Lin Wanqing meticulously recounting every step from drugging to strangulation. When she mentioned misleading the police with the diamond earring, Li Ming couldn't help but interrupt: "Your sister almost got sentenced to death because of you, don't you feel any remorse?"
"Guilt?" Lin Wanqing raised an eyebrow. "She's been taking things from me since she was little—my adoptive parents' love, my school scholarships, and now she even wants to take my man—" She suddenly realized she had let something slip and her face turned pale.
"Do you have an affair with Guo Jianfeng?" Li Ming seized on the key point.
Lin Wanqing remained silent for a long time before finally nodding: "Last year, he helped me with my investments, and after a while..." She closed her eyes, "He said he would break up with Chen Lili and marry me. But later he got scared, saying that Chen Guisheng was not someone to be trifled with, and wanted to settle things with money..."
“So you killed him,” Li Ming sighed, “just because he wanted to end the affair?”
"Because he betrayed me!" Lin Wanqing suddenly lost control. "He took my money, slept with me, and now he wants to walk away cleanly? Impossible!" She gasped for breath, tears streaming down her face. "If I can't have him, no one else can."
As the identification process concluded, the sunlight was suddenly obscured by clouds, plunging the rooftop into brief darkness. As Lin Wanqing was being led downstairs, she suddenly stopped at the corner of the fire escape staircase: "There's a cigarette butt over there, it's 'Yuxi' cigarettes that Ah Zhong smoked. Didn't you find it?"
Li Ming was taken aback and immediately notified the technician to re-examine the evidence. Sure enough, a cigarette butt with teeth marks was retrieved from a gap at the corner of the stairs, and the DNA comparison result matched Ah Zhong perfectly—this was the last piece of "evidence" that Lin Wanqing deliberately left behind to ensure that the police would follow the path she had designed.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, Li Ming stood by the rooftop railing, gazing at the distant city skyline. Xiao Zhang handed him a report: "Lin Wanqing's confession matches the scene reconstruction perfectly, and A Zhong has also confessed, admitting to assisting in the murder."
As Li Ming left the Jinshan Building, he passed by the Jinshi Financial Company in the lobby and saw Chen Lili packing up Guo Jianfeng's belongings. She was holding the fiddle-leaf fig, tears dripping onto the leaves like morning dew. Li Ming suddenly remembered Lin Wanqing's words in the interrogation room: "Greed is like a bottomless pit, devouring everything." And Guo Jianfeng and Lin Wanqing were ultimately pitiful people devoured by greed.
As night fell, the truth behind Guo Jianfeng's case was finally revealed. Li Ming looked at the keywords "crime of passion, money laundering, frame-up" on the investigation report about Guo Jianfeng's murder in the conference room, sighed, and finally erased them all.