National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 714 - 657 Motive

Chapter 714: Chapter 657 Motive

Before noon, Liu Cheng had the suspect brought back in for questioning.

According to regulations, criminal evidence must be confirmed within 24 hours; if detention is deemed necessary, criminal detention procedures should be processed, and only then can the suspect be sent to a detention center.

Criminal detention can last for 3 days. For complicated cases, it can be extended to 7 days. In cases involving repeat offenses, organized crime, or crimes across different areas, the period can be extended up to 30 days.

All of the above does not constitute an arrest in legal terms!

Arrest requires that the main facts of the crime be ascertained and that the primary evidence be collected before a "Request for Approval of Arrest Warrant" is produced. Only after it is approved by the prosecutor’s office within 7 days can an "Arrest Warrant" be issued to carry out the arrest.

Therefore, if someone has been formally arrested, generally speaking, they can abandon any hope for leniency. As soon as they see the arrest warrant, they shouldn’t even think about probation—it’s guaranteed to be an actual sentence. If someone is given probation after the arrest, the prosecutor’s office would be held accountable; without solid evidence, an arrest warrant cannot be obtained.

The time Yue Hanwei, the suspect, entered the interrogation room coincided with the arrival of Hang City’s Zhengguang Bureau chief at the criminal police team, where Tao Lu personally played the surveillance footage Jiang Yuan and others had found.

In the 42-inch TV screen, in a corner of the video, two people were seen engaging in a fierce tussle, and seconds later, one person was pushed out of the camera’s range, followed quickly by the pusher rushing out.

The chief watched with great attention, repeatedly asking for the video to be rewound and paused in order to clearly see the faces and figures of the people inside, then comparing them to Yue Hanwei, the captured suspect.

After a long time, the chief let out a long sigh, saying, "It looks like the same person."

"The image enhancement done by Jiang Yuan is very clear," the political commissar added from the side.

The chief waved his hand, saying, "This is our first—well, second collaboration, but we still need to rely on ourselves primarily. We have to verify everything that needs to be verified; otherwise, if any issues arise later on, we will be the ones to bear the responsibility."

The political commissar and Tao Lu looked at each other, neither daring to make unnecessary comments.

The chief harbored doubts. Indeed, the case had been solved too quickly, which inevitably raised suspicions that there might be elements of falsification involved. Regardless of the frequency, such incidents have occurred before, like the widely reported case of Uncle Zhang and his nephew. At that time, Nie Haifen, the head of the preliminary investigation team in Hang City—a place known for its high level of civility—convicted the suspects through various means despite a severe lack of evidence.

Even worse was the narcotics team leader from some place in the northwest who stuffed 1 kilogram of drugs into a taxi driver’s trunk and then captured him...

Though it goes without saying, both of the aforementioned people were well-known detectives in their locales, with Nie Haifen even appearing on CCTV and receiving the title of "March 8th Red-Banner Holder." The very case she used to substantiate her appearance was the Uncle Zhang case.

However, skepticism is nothing out of the ordinary for criminal detectives. Even Tao Lu himself had triple-checked; he simply kept silent about it.

Technicians from the Image Investigation Brigade were quickly called over to reassess the image enhancement done by Jiang Yuan as well as the original surveillance footage.

He had actually already assessed it, with his client being none other than Tao Lu sitting across from him. But with Tao Lu remaining silent, he pretended to be unaware and carefully reassessed everything one more time before saying, "Chief, the video is the original, unedited version and there’s nothing wrong with the image enhancement; the technique is very good. Technically speaking, it meets the criteria."

"Can it be used in court?" The chief’s requirement was higher than merely providing leads.

After assessing twice, the technician confidently said, "It should be possible."

"Mm," the chief nodded, then picked up a photo that had been developed and studied it for a while before stating, "We hadn’t noticed this surveillance footage before?"

"This footage was beyond our estimated time of death," Tao Lu carefully explained. "It was Jiang Yuan who re-estimated the time of death and then reviewed the video recordings of that day to find this footage."

The chief silently sighed, melancholic about the resources spent in vain, since his team hadn’t managed to pierce through this mystery.

Turning around, the chief asked, "So, this Yue Hanwei is a major suspect. What’s his relationship with the victim?"

"As of now, the two appear to be neighbors living in the same building, with the victim residing on the first floor and Yue Hanwei on the sixteenth floor," answered Tao Lu.

"What kind of neighborly relationship is that?" the chief frowned, asking, "Did the two have any financial transactions?"

"So far, none have been found."

"What about their social relations?"

Tao Lu shook his head: "As of now, there seems to be none, with no phone records or WeChat contacts between the two..."

From the side, the political commissar said, "We’ve checked the suspect’s spouse as well and haven’t found anything for the time being."

The chief grunted. Merely the fact that they were neighbors—in modern life, that’s utterly insignificant. How many people live for ten or twenty years without even knowing who their next-door neighbor is? By contrast, if either of them had played the role of the proverbial "neighbor Wang," the case would be half-solved already.

However, even the chief knew this was not easy. While the case was still under current investigation, similar inquiries had been made, and although not as precise as this matching pairs approach, the victim’s phone had been thoroughly examined, including deleted messages which had also been recovered from the server for recent communications.

Starting with that assumption actually means supposing the murderer committed the crime out of passion, and that before or after such intense emotions, a normal person fighting for the purpose of courting would mostly have some genuine verbal exchange—after all, to be so impassioned as to kill someone and yet not utter a word is something I’ve only heard of, never seen.

Unfortunately, neither the perpetrator nor the victim seemed cooperative.

The Chief suddenly looked up, noticed Tao Lu about to speak but hesitating, and then turned his gaze towards Political Commissar Yu Xu.

Political Commissar Yu Xu caught the brainwave accurately, saying, "Both the killer and the victim are straight men."

Everyone sighed.

"Alright, let’s wait for your interrogation results then," the Chief didn’t want to wait anymore and simply said, "Notify me the moment the results are in. Also, make sure to handle this case with the utmost rigor, it’s okay to set a higher standard, don’t embarrass us at the prosecutor’s office."

The last sentence was unnecessary, the main point had already been made in the first part.

Tao Lu immediately agreed, sent off the Chief, and then headed straight for the surveillance room to keep watch.

The interrogation lasted a very long time.

Not much content to cover, but due to the gravity of the case, the interrogators asked the same questions over and over, compared notes from different angles, and even sent people back to the suspect’s home to collect physical evidence...

It was almost evening when the questioning couldn’t continue, and the interrogators reluctantly called it a day.

Tao Lu first looked through the transcripts signed by the suspect, then with an indeterminate expression, went upstairs to find Jiang Yuan.

The temporary office.

Jiang Yuan and the others were huddled around a bowl of beef, chewing on the bones with high spirits.

The meticulously selected fresh beef ribs, not previously frozen, were butchered in the morning and flown in by morning flight, prepared by a chef brought by Huang Qiangmin. The beef was boiled in plain water, and even just dipped in salt, it tasted delicious. Of course, to showcase his skills, the chef also diligently prepared mushroom sauce, red wine sauce, mayonnaise, black pepper sauce, and so on, allowing everyone to dip as they pleased, highlighting a combination of focus and democracy.

Jiang Yuan held a beef rib in his hands and gently tore off a big chunk of meat with his teeth, munching away in a primeval manner, his demeanor sincere and his appetite tremendous.

Tao Lu first watched with envy, then with speechlessness.

A perfectly good office, and the scene he encountered upon each visit was that of a cafeteria.

Yet if Tao Lu might have had something to say the previous time, this time he had no intention to grumble. Instead, he greeted them cheerfully, saying, "Better lucky than early, I haven’t had dinner yet."

"Join us, join us," Jiang Yuan called him over to sit down.

Tao Lu sat down beside Jiang Yuan with a chuckle, actually put on a glove, grabbed a piece of beef, and started eating.

"Wow, this is delicious!" Tao Lu exclaimed half sincerely, half mockingly.

"Try it with a bit of salt, it tastes even better, just eat double the recommended intake of salt for the country, it’s delicious," Jiang Yuan swallowed the beef in his mouth, paired it with some raw onion, waited for the spiciness to rise, then grinned before asking Tao Lu, "Tao, did the interrogation yield any results?"

"Yeah, the suspect confessed," Tao Lu took a bite of meat and followed Jiang Yuan by having a bite of raw onion, the spice nearly bringing tears to his eyes, so he quickly took two more bites of meat.

"What was the motive?" Jiang Yuan wasn’t surprised the suspect confessed. With the video evidence out there, it was tough for the suspect to clear things up.

As for not explaining? If every average person could do that, it would be the interrogators’ lack of professionalism.

Tao Lu put down the half-eaten piece of meat, swallowed what was in his mouth, and said, "Garbage disposal."

"What?"

Tao Lu spread his hands, saying, "The victim was a bachelor living on the first floor, who often liked to leave his garbage outside his door, accumulating it for a day or two before disposing of it all at once. The suspect, although living on the 16th floor, would see the victim’s garbage and smell the odor every time he exited the elevator. The two had an accidental run-in a few months ago, which led to a verbal altercation that quickly ended but left both parties displeased."

Tao Lu gave everyone a moment to digest the information, then continued, "On February 9th, the two encountered each other in the residential area, argued for a few words, then quickly came to shoving, and as they fell to the ground one after the other, Yue Hanwei claimed he used a chokehold to calm the victim down, only to let go and find the victim had died."

The sounds of chewing in the temporary office stopped.

Mu Zhiyang muttered quietly, "I’m also a bachelor, I like to leave my garbage by the door..."