HLnovel Chapter 376 Obedient and Clingy Younger Brother (87)
Chapter 376 Obedient and Clingy Younger Brother (87)
The injuries on Zhang Jian's legs were there when he was a child, from the time he committed his first crime.
Moreover, judging from his own confession, he harbored a deep-seated and brutal hatred for the victims.
He hated women, especially those who reminded him of his mother.
The reason he chose victims with vastly different circumstances, analyzed through criminal psychology, is partly because he had never seen what his mother looked like.
According to his own account, his mother ran away when he was about three years old and never came back.
According to a child's memory, he should have no impression of his mother, so the victim he killed must have some similarity to the mother he hated in his subconscious.
This "mother" refers not only to the mother who gave birth to him and disappeared when he was three years old, but also to the image of the mother that Zheng Qingping imagined in his heart.
Even Zhang Jian himself couldn't explain it clearly. He just howled that the women he killed were all women he disliked at first glance and wanted to kill!
His crime scene exuded an aura of excessive killing. Many experienced investigators, from the moment they stepped into the crime scene, had already gradually sketched out the criminal's personality traits in their minds.
Jin Shuhe also accumulated experience little by little through his work.
The more Jin Shuhe looked at the old case files and the photos of the crime scenes, the more incongruous he felt.
Even if Zhang Jianhe returned to the crime scene, he would never drag the victim's body back onto the bed.
Even though Jin Shuhe couldn't tell exactly how long he had been in the room, it felt like an eternity.
The murderer stood quietly beside the corpse, seemingly appreciating and savoring it, which was unlike Zhang Jianhe's style.
The first interrogation of Zhang Jianhe ended with him becoming emotionally agitated and breaking down.
But most of the attention was not on him, but on Jin Shuhe.
No one looked relaxed; the atmosphere in the office was even somewhat oppressive. They thought the case was solved, and although the truth was cruel, it was still a good thing for Jin Shuhe.
So many years have passed, and the murderer who killed our loved ones has finally been caught. Even though we can never forget it, it's a huge weight lifted off our shoulders, and the matter is finally settled.
Who would have thought it would end in such an absurd way?
The killer in the January 27th serial murder case has been caught, and he has confessed to his crimes.
However, the case of Jin Shuhe's mother remains unsolved, and there is still another murderer.
Over the years, he may have only killed Jin Shuhe's mother, and who knows... if there will be any more chances to find her.
Of all the people present, Jin Shuhe was the calmest, as he had long been mentally prepared for this outcome.
Although he had thought that maybe he was wrong, maybe it really was his childhood self who had a memory lapse due to the stress, and maybe his mother was also a victim of this serial murder case.
But now it's been proven that he wasn't wrong, his memory wasn't wrong, and his intuition wasn't wrong either.
But the most important task now is to interrogate Zhang Jianhe.
During the second interrogation, Zhang Jianhe was noticeably more dejected.
His expression was sinister, and when asked about the details of the crime, he spoke fluently and logically.
"I know that if I don't tell you now, I'll never have the chance again. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it..."
He chuckled nervously in a low voice, then suddenly asked, "Hey? Let me ask you a question. Am I... well, a really, really awesome serial killer?"
His murky eyes flashed with unfathomable malice as he scanned everyone present: "I haven't stopped learning all these years. I've read, you know, watched a lot of books and TV shows about serial killers. I don't think I'm any worse than them! Hey, when the time comes, will anyone come and interview me, write a book about me? Could you put up the photos of all the women I've killed so everyone can have a look?"
Compared to his first outburst of madness, he now gives the impression of being a madman whose psychology is twisted to the extreme.
When he was in society, he had to deliberately suppress himself in order to hide his true self; this is his true self now.
Now that he knew he had no chance of survival once caught, he unleashed all the pent-up malice he had been holding back.
Seeing that the police on the other side remained unmoved.
He continued, "I've seen those foreign serial killers, even when they're in prison, girls write to them, practically begging to sleep with them in jail!"
He grinned, revealing a blackened, decayed front tooth: "Write down my story. While I'm in jail, will any women come running to be my mother? Preferably ones who look like the dead ones, so I can have some fun looking at them!"
"Oh!"
Lu Chun, who was in charge of taking notes today, suddenly slammed his notebook on the table.
As a woman herself, she could no longer tolerate hearing these words and seeing this wicked criminal showing no remorse and wantonly humiliating the deceased.
Team Leader Xie glanced at her but didn't say anything to stop her.
"Be serious!" Wu Qidong said sternly, "Do you think you're so great and awesome just because you say these things? You only prey on the weak, and only prey on women who are weaker than you. Some of them have no grudge against you, and some have helped you wholeheartedly. You repay kindness with enmity. What right do you have to sit here and talk so shamelessly?"
"Interview you? Publish a book about you? You'll only face legal punishment, spend your remaining days under close surveillance, be infamous for eternity, and everyone who knows you will spit on you."
Hearing this, Zhang Jian's face turned ashen. His arrogance and swagger did not inspire any fear in front of law enforcement officers.
His bluff was exposed one by one, and he began to realize that he had run out of tricks. After entering the detention cell, he slowly realized that he was really finished.
No one is completely indifferent when facing death, not even a murderer with multiple lives on his hands.
When it comes to my own life, I realize how ridiculous it all is.
"Have you identified a second victim this year?"
“I originally planned to kill Zheng Qingping and then stop…” Zhang Jianhe slumped into a chair: “I never thought I would run into Zheng Qingping, but when I went to deliver water to the school, I saw her picture on the wall of outstanding teachers, and I recognized her at a glance!”
"She dumped me, and she's still living such a good life. I'm going to fucking kill her!" Zhang Jianhe gritted his teeth.
"I can't find the dead woman who gave birth to me, so I'll use her instead. I'll kill her, have my fun, and then retire from this life! Who told her to betray me!"
"What exactly did she do to offend you?!" Lu Chun demanded angrily.
"She shouldn't have cared about you in the first place, shouldn't have bought you stationery, shouldn't have bought you clothes, and shouldn't have made you hide in her dorm when your dad was beating you to a pulp!"
Zhang Jian opened his mouth and sneered, "She should be good to me! A mother should be good to her child! Why are other people's parents good to them, but my mother keeps running away!" What he said was utterly absurd, but he firmly believed it.
"Lu Chun, you go out and let Qi Silang come in!" Captain Xie said to her.
Lu Chun slammed his pen on the table, got up and left, patting Qi Silang on the shoulder to let him in.
I stood in front of the glass of the room next door, angry.
"Tell me, why isn't the practice of 'an eye for an eye' going to work anymore?" Lü Chun gritted her teeth. "We should treat him the same way he treated the victims! Let him experience the pain of the victims himself!"
“Hey—we can just say that to ourselves, okay…” Qin Wen patted her arm and comforted her, “His days won’t be easy. There’s no point in you getting angry with him. From now until the day he’s executed, he’ll only get more and more afraid.”
But after only one day, things suddenly took a dramatic turn.
During the third interrogation of Zhang Jianhe, he asked with a sidelong glance: "Sir, how many more times do you want to ask me this?" He spoke in a strange tone.
Wu Qidong ignored him and asked, "What do you know about the ancient skeleton that was unearthed at the location of your family's ancestral grave?"
Zhang Tianhe's expression froze for a moment. Then he smirked. That place isn't my family's ancestral graveyard. What does it matter to me who died in there? I didn't kill them. I've already told you all about the ones I killed.
Wu Qidong's face was extremely grim.
Since Zhang Jianhe had mentioned that he went back to his hometown to relocate graves during the Spring Festival, the Major Crimes Unit called to confirm.
The relocation of graves is real, but the timeline is fake.
He moved the grave a few days before the Lunar New Year; he had already returned to Pucheng on the night of Lunar New Year's Eve.
He wasn't the only one who moved graves during the Lunar New Year.
As he said, that piece of land is now included in the government's planning area, and all the descendants of those who buried their families there are rushing to move their elders' graves during the Chinese New Year this year.
Who knew that just a few days after Zhang Jianhe made the killing, things would go wrong.
In addition to the urns that each household dug up in preparation for relocation, three skeletons that had not been cremated but were directly buried were also found.
The first body was unearthed on the evening of the day Lü Chun and Qin Wen visited the former principal.
This body was located on the edge of that cemetery.
Because a family had lost the tombstone they erected for their great-grandfather many years ago, they dug up this thing while digging.
They were so scared they were terrified.
Then, the next day, a second body was unearthed. The villagers were terrified, not knowing what had happened. It was the Lunar New Year, and the incident seemed particularly ominous and frightening. So they all called the police.
Under the organization of the local police station, the entire plot of land used as ancestral graves was thoroughly excavated, and the third body was found.
The third body was found next to the graves of Zhang Jianhe's grandparents and father.
When I called back because of Zhang Jianhe's case, the police officers at the local police station specifically told me about it.
There are suspicions that he may also be involved with Zhang Jianhe.
However, the forensic experts who went to the scene to investigate immediately ruled out this possibility...
Because these bodies are very old.
The body next to Zhang Jianhe's elders had probably been dead and buried for 30 to 40 years.
The other two bodies were from an even longer period, approximately fifty years ago.
To find out the more specific time, we need to go back to the forensic laboratory for further testing.
However, considering this timeframe, it's impossible for it to be related to Zhang Jianhe.
Zhang Jianhe is thirty-eight years old this year. Judging from the most recent corpse, it's impossible that he started killing people when he was just a few years old.
But Wu Qidong felt something was amiss. How could a relatively isolated and impoverished village have three unidentified corpses appear within a decade or so without causing any panic or discussion?
Even when it was unearthed, the local villagers were terrified and astonished.
All these phenomena indicate that there must be a problem here.
Moreover, preliminary examinations of these three bodies indicate that they did not die of natural causes or illness.
The most recent body had multiple bruises on its bones indicating previous fractures.
Furthermore, there was a very obvious wound on his head, consistent with being struck hard on the back of the head. These are signs of death due to brain injury.
After discussing it with Captain Xie, Wu Qidong thought of a very scary possibility.
When Qi Silang heard this in the Major Crimes Unit office, he was dumbfounded: "Holy crap, if this is true..."
Jin Shuhe never expected things to develop this way.
In the past few days, he and Qin Wen, along with several investigators, have shifted their focus back to the murder case of his mother from years ago.
After a brief meeting, the direction of the investigation was revised.
I just got back from outside today and heard this news.
When they arrived at the room next to the interrogation room, Zhang Jianhe no longer had that crazy look on his face.
He clenched his fists tightly and suddenly slammed them down: "Say it again? What the hell did you say?"
“I told you we’ve already sent your DNA to be compared with the DNA of several skeletons, and we’ll know the results soon,” Wu Qidong said calmly.
"I'd like to ask you, when you were little, did you notice anything unusual about your home or village?"
Zhang Jianhe didn't say anything, but instead became extremely agitated, as if there was no way to communicate with him.
But the results came quickly. When he was brought back to the interrogation room, everyone could clearly see that his face was extremely pale, and he looked like he was about to collapse.
Staring blankly at Wu Qidong as he said, "The female skeleton that was dug out next to your three elders proves that she is related to you by blood; she is your biological mother."
"Zhang Jian and you have been searching for him for so many years, and now you have found him. She has been dead for more than 30 years."
The interrogation room was deathly silent.