Chapter 146
Jiang Pingce remembered all the details since entering the examination room.
That night, after Yue Xingwen reported the case, the Criminal Police Force immediately dispatched. Due to the heavy rain, there were few cars on the street, and the road was very smooth along the way. The police car honked its horn to the crime scene at the fastest speed, and arrived at the Xinghai Building 10 minutes later.
Captain Lin found the body hanging on the billboard on the 3rd floor, briefly asked Yue Xingwen a few words, and then led someone to knock on the door. After knocking on the door for half a minute, a security guard came to open the door. The middle-aged man had gray hair, sleepy eyes, and was surprised when he saw a group of policemen. He had been very cooperative during the investigation.
From beginning to end, he behaved like a passerby who had nothing to do with the case.
The security guard’s name was Zhao Cheng, and he was a very insignificant member of the security team hired by Xinghai Group.
Captain Lin later took him to make a statement and asked him, “Do you know Zhou Ziyang?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
Captain Lin asked, “Where are you tonight? Have you seen any suspicious people walking into the Xinghai Building?”
The security guard replied, “I locked the door at 10 pm at night, and then I was napping in the duty room. I didn’t see anyone coming in ah?”
Captain Lin quickly dismissed him, and Jiang Pingce did not associate the case with him at all.
At the beginning, the direction of investigation was Chen Yueqin and Qi Zhao, who remained in the building. One was the mistress of the deceased, and the other had a work conflict with the deceased, and both had a motive for killing.
Immediately after, Xingwen found that on the night of the crime, the details of the Xinghai Apartment across the street that ‘both elevators are on the 1st floor’ proved that someone had gone out. After finding the mysterious man, Zhang Ronghua who went out in the middle of the night, involving the rich second-generation friend group behind Zhang Ronghua, and then found Shen Haibin’s rape case five years ago.
Everyone followed the chain of clues, pulling out the threads, and was eventually surprised to find—— The security guard who was ignored by everyone at the beginning was actually the biological father of the victim of the Shen Haibin case five years ago!
Jiang Pingce looked at the photo in the laptop and frowned. “He changed his name?”
Yue Xingwen said, “His current name is Zhao Cheng, not Zhao Jianming. He should have changed his name and ID card.”
Adults could voluntarily change their names. If he directly called Zhao Jianming, the building’s daily ‘security duty list’ would list the night shift security list and contact information. Once Lawyer Zhou saw the name ‘Zhao Jianming’, he would recall the case he represented ten years ago, and thus be alerted.
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He could seize the best time to commit the crime!
Ke Shaobin said, “We have carefully seen the monitoring. On the day of the crime, three maintenance workers went to the roof to repair the drainage pipe in the afternoon. They came down in half an hour, and no one went to the roof after that. The monitoring only captured the image of the deceased climbing up to the rooftop. Since the security guard locked the door at 10 pm at night, he must have been on the rooftop after 10 pm. Why didn’t the monitoring capture his figure?”
The security guards must remain in the duty room until the door was locked, and could not leave without permission.
Locking the door at 10 pm, this was the rule of Xinghai Building. Zhao Cheng (Zhao Jianming) was indeed locking the door at 10 pm that night, and the monitoring of the lobby on the 1st floor also showed a picture of him going to lock the door, and after locking the door, he returned to the duty room.
If he committed the crime, he could only climb to the rooftop after 10 pm.
Yue Xingwen thought carefully and analyzed, “The security guard must be very familiar with the environment of the building, and he is the person who has the easiest access to the monitoring. The deceased fell from the building at 0:00 am. I went downstairs with senior sister Lan and senior sister Lin to find the body in the heavy rain and spent a lot of time. At 00:15 am I saw the body hanging on the billboard and then called the police. The police rushed to the scene at 00:30 am and knocked on the door to let the security guard open it.”
Yue Xingwen observed the Xinghai Building in the apartment across the street, and saw that someone seemed to have fallen on the roof of the building. It was raining heavily, his vision was blurry and he didn’t want to call the police before he found the body. What if he was dazzled?
Moreover, because the elevator stopped on the 1st floor when he went out, it took a lot of time to wait for the elevator and cross the street. This resulted in a 30-minute window period between Zhou Ziyang’s death and the arrival of the police at the scene.
Jiang Pingce looked at Yue Xingwen and said, “In other words, he has 30 minutes to deal with the scene and destroy evidence.”
The two men looked at each other and said tacitly, “The monitoring was tampered with by him?”
Before the police came into contact with the monitoring, the security guard would see the monitoring in the duty room. Thinking of this, Ke Shaobin opened the monitoring folder of the Xinghai Building, found out the picture captured by the camera installed in the stairwell on the 40th floor, turned on the video, quickly slid the mouse to about 10 pm at night, and asked, “Are you saying this video has been tampered by him?”
Yue Xingwen nodded and said, “Let’s not fast forward, slowly go through it from the beginning.”
From 3:00 pm to 11:50 pm, for 8 hours, no one passed through the stairwell leading to the rooftop, so 99% of the footage captured by this monitoring was an empty stairwell, completely unchanged.
Whether it was the police or Ke Shaobin, it was impossible to stare at 8 hours of continuous blank monitoring without missing a second. Everyone was playing at two or even four times the speed of fast forward playback in order to investigate the case, and only paused and played slowly when there were people in the video.
Today, they speculated that the monitoring might have been tampered. Starting from 10 pm, they stared at the video without missing a second.
The image had been of an empty stairwell.
10:30 pm.
10:50 pm.
There was no change in the image video. Everyone’s eyes were sour, and they did not find anything wrong.
When they saw 11:01 pm, suddenly, Jiang Pingce whispered, “Go back 2 minutes!”
Ke Shaobin was stunned for a moment, and the mouse paused. The video was rewinded for 2 minutes from the beginning. Jiang Pingce stared intently at the time bar in the upper right corner of the video, and saw that the time bar suddenly jumped from 11:01 to 11:03!
Yue Xingwen also discovered this, and immediately spoke up, “The monitoring video was cut for 2 minutes!”
It was just a short 2 minutes. Because the video was motionless, they couldn’t see it at all when they played it in fast-forward. They had to keep staring at the time bar to find this subtle clue.
When the police investigated the case, because there were too many monitoring that they copied back, it was impossible for everyone to watch it second by second. They could not watch it for several days, so they watched it in fast-forward, looking for someone in the monitoring.
The murderer had captured this psychology.
The disappearance of 2 minutes was the key!
Jiang Pingce quickly said, “Take out the monitoring of the two elevators, and start watching from 10 pm at night.”
Ke Shaobin quickly splitted it into two windows, opened the monitoring of the two elevators of the Xinghai Building. From 10 pm onwards, not missing a minute, both elevators were motionless, lasting for a long time, until 10:40 pm, the time bar in the upper right corner of one of the elevators suddenly jumped from 10:45 pm to 10: 47 pm.
If they look at the image, the elevator in the video still had not moved, and they could only find loopholes by staring at the time bar.
Ke Shaobin said excitedly, “The monitoring of the elevator is missing for 2 minutes!”
This was also a detail that they did not notice at all when they fast-forwarded the playback.
Jiang Pingce said, “Take out the monitoring of the corridor on the 40th floor, and start watching it at 10:47 pm.”
Ke Shaobin found the monitoring video of the corridor on the 40th floor, and played it back from 10:47 pm. Sure enough, he found that the monitoring time bar jumped from 10:47 pm to 10:49 pm, “Another 2 minutes missing?!”
Yue Xingwen quickly took out a piece of paper and said while taking notes, “The elevators of the Xinghai Building are all fast elevators, running to the 40th floor and it only takes 2 minutes to descend back to the 1st floor. At 10:45 pm that night, the murderer took the no. 1 elevator to the 40th floor, and he would be captured in the elevator’s monitoring, so the 2-minute monitoring video was cut by him.”
Jiang Pingce followed closely and said, “At 10:47 pm, the murderer appeared in the lobby on the 40th floor, and the monitoring video of the corridor would also captured him, so he cut the monitoring video of the corridor on the 40th floor from 10:47 pm to 10:49 pm.”
Yue Xingwen said, “After the murderer came to the 40th floor, he was likely to temporarily hide in the men’s toilet. The toilet is not monitored. At that time, Lawyer Zhou and Chen Yueqin were intimate in the women’s toilet, and if he hid in the men’s toilet, he would not have been discovered by these two people. The two were immersed in the excitement of cheating and did not hear the slight footsteps in the toilet next door. At 11:01 pm, the murderer climbed up to the roof through the stairwell, and the stairwell monitoring from 11:01 pm to 11:03 was also cut.”
The elevator, stairwell, and corridor of the Xinghai Building did not have blind spots for monitoring.
So, why didn’t the murderer appear in the monitoring? Could he be invisible?
In fact, the monitoring had captured him. However, he erased all traces of his existence!
Only the security guards knew the location of all the monitoring cameras in the building, and could see themselves from the monitoring records as soon as possible, and then cut off all the monitoring videos related to himself.
The monitoring video that was finally copied to the police was cut and processed by video software, and of course the police could not find him from the monitoring!
Elevator no. 1, 10:45 pm ~ 10:47 pm, 2-minute monitoring video was missing;
The lobby and corridor on the 40th floor, 10:47 pm ~ 10:49 pm monitoring video was missing;
In the stairwell leading to the rooftop on the 40th floor, 23:01 pm 11:03 pm monitoring video was missing.
This was the trajectory of the murderer on the night of the crime.
Yue Xingwen handed the timeline sorted out to his teammates, and everyone looked at each other.
In the massive monitoring video of Xinghai Building, if they were not careful enough for the missing minutes, it was really difficult to detect, especially in order to find someone, they would fast-forward the video. Who would notice the upper right corner of the time bar suddenly missing 2 minutes?
They finally found traces of the murderer’s existence with Yue Xingwen’s careful analysis and Jiang Pingce’s detailed observation.
Both of them looked at each other, and said, “It seems that we have to go and talk to ths security guard in person.”
I love this story but why are these two still not together… even after sleeping in the same bed 🤦🏽♀️
It’s just extremely slow slow-burn 💀 though they are starting to realize their feelings
Right! 300 chapters later… the story definitely makes it worth waiting for.
I think it’s time to go to the captain of police
Thank you for your translation 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
I had a feeling that the cameras have been tampered with, but my suspisions fell on the friend of the girl who was rped😅😅
When the police said that the murderer was not caught in the cctv I already know that the video they watch have been tampered. I almost thought that I was wrong because they didnt mention it afterwards (I thought they didnt mention it as there’s no tampering of video but instead they only realized it too late. Anyway, wise people arent perfect afterall, with too much pressure and stress they forget things