I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 52: Chapter 50: No Alibi

After meeting with Shen Yanzhou, Zhuang Yanzheng dropped off a meal at the police station, then took Su Miaoyi back to the No. 7 Clubhouse.

He had originally planned on taking her home, but Su Miaoyi wanted to revisit the scene. So, they grabbed Lu Zhishen, who was just about to head home from the station, and the three of them went over together.

Bloodstains had been discovered in a private room on the fifth floor of the clubhouse, and everyone at the party claimed that only Jiang Lingjie and Xia Yan had been alone together.

Jiang Lingjie was the prime suspect.

He should have been brought to the interrogation room, but he was in the hospital.

Many of the specific test results were not back yet. The hospital’s current assessment was that they couldn’t rule out an underlying heart condition and did not recommend he be discharged.

So, Jiang Lingjie remained at the hospital, with police officers stationed there to monitor him.

However, Jiang Lingjie had an alibi.

It was already very late, and a crowd of fans was still gathered in front of the No. 7 Clubhouse.

The three of them used the back door again.

They reached the fifth floor and pushed open the door.

The door let out a creaking sound.

Lu Zhishen’s eyes widened as he stared at it. ”This clubhouse is so fancy you could probably pry gold off the walls, so why does the door sound so creaky?”

Su Miaoyi glanced at him. ”Are you scared?”

”Aren’t you? It’s so late, and there’s not a soul in sight,” Lu Zhishen said. ”Your voice echoes if you talk too loud. And look at this decor... You think we’re still in our own world? What if we crossed over into another dimension the moment we opened that door?”

Su Miaoyi glanced at Zhuang Yanzheng first.

He acted as if he hadn’t heard a word, so she turned her gaze back to Lu Zhishen.

It was the first time she had heard Lu Zhishen say so much at once.

And he didn’t seem scared; he seemed excited.

Su Miaoyi suddenly slowed her pace. A few seconds later, she smacked Lu Zhishen on the shoulder.

Lu Zhishen jumped with a start and turned to look at her.

Su Miaoyi burst out laughing. ”You were saying all that just to freak me out so you could give me a real scare, weren’t you?”

Lu Zhishen raised a hand to scratch his cheek, cleared his throat, and continued walking forward.

”Childish,” Su Miaoyi huffed. She glanced around. Even with the lights on, it did feel a bit eerie, so she quickened her pace to catch up with them.

Zhuang Yanzheng examined the crime scene but found nothing new.

Lu Zhishen was also looking around.

After a moment, Zhuang Yanzheng asked, ”Where’s Su Miaoyi?”

Lu Zhishen looked from side to side. ”I haven’t seen her for a bit.”

”I’m over here,” Su Miaoyi’s voice called from nearby. ”Second room from the east side. Captain Zhuang, I’ve found something.”

Zhuang Yanzheng and Lu Zhishen immediately headed to the room.

They saw Su Miaoyi crouching in front of a cabinet, using tweezers to pull a piece of fishing line from the gap between the cabinet and the wall.

Zhuang Yanzheng approached.

Su Miaoyi pulled the entire fishing line out.

Zhuang Yanzheng looked up and saw a very thin fishing line stretched above the window, its other end wedged in the gap of a cabinet on the opposite side.

The line was too thin to be easily seen with the naked eye.

”And this little robot.” Su Miaoyi walked over to the robot and fiddled with it. ”This hook here—I tested it. It can extend and retract on a timer.”

”A timer device?” Lu Zhishen said.

”Yes.” Su Miaoyi shone her flashlight out the window to the ground below. ”That wood carving. It must have made a loud noise when it fell.”

Lu Zhishen glanced down, then back at the room’s layout and decor. ”It really does look like an ornament that belongs in this room.”

”The fishing line was stretched across the top of the window—both the line and its anchor point are very strong. One end of the line went out the window, tied to the wood carving, which was placed on the balcony railing. The other end, inside the room, was controlled by the robot,” Su Miaoyi explained. ”I checked the robot’s timer log. A one-hour timer was set at 1:02 AM last night.”

”When the timer went off, the robot’s hook extended, releasing the fishing line it was holding. Eventually, the wood carving on the balcony would fall. The window didn’t even need to be open. Visually, it would appear closed, but the tiniest crack was enough for this mechanism to work,” Su Miaoyi said. ”This also lines up with the time the security guard reported hearing a noise downstairs and coming over to check.”

”It’s that sophisticated?” Lu Zhishen asked, puzzled. ”The wood carving falls, but the fishing line is retracted and even hidden in a gap?”

Zhuang Yanzheng said, ”There’s a study on the third floor. More than half of the books in there are on subjects like Mechanical Techniques, and there are many intricate devices made by Jiang Lingjie.”

He had heard about this as well.

That was why he had paid special attention when inspecting the scene that morning, looking for any secret rooms or hidden contraptions in the clubhouse.

He hadn’t found any.

He never expected the skill to be used like this.

”This room juts out. The window the deceased fell from is one room over to the west,” Su Miaoyi said. ”The guard saw the body and assumed the noise was from the fall, so he overlooked the wood carving.”

”Then didn’t security hear the body fall?” Lu Zhishen asked.

”Between 12:30 and 12:45 AM is the security shift change, so no one was in this area.” Zhuang Yanzheng recalled the guard’s statement; they changed shifts at the same time every day. ”There was constant music from upstairs, and the swimming pool is far from this side. The people at the party only heard the guard yelling from downstairs that someone had jumped. They didn’t hear anything else.”

”So... the deceased fell between 12:30 and 12:45 AM,” Lu Zhishen said. ”This device was used to obscure the actual time of the fall.”

”Which means Jiang Lingjie no longer has an alibi. He was here during that time.” Su Miaoyi stared at the faint marks on the window frame left by the fishing line.

When she had first gone to the window, she’d noticed it wasn’t tightly closed. Upon opening it, she discovered the marks on the frame, and by following them, she had found the fishing line.

Then she had also discovered faint drag marks on the robot’s hook.

”Not only was he here, he also cleaned up the scene,” Su Miaoyi said, looking at the recovered fishing line. The piece was unusually long. ”There isn’t a single fingerprint on this robot. The timer was set last night, but there are no prints whatsoever. It was wiped clean.”

Lu Zhishen gave Su Miaoyi a thumbs-up.

Zhuang Yanzheng also glanced at her and nodded, then went to the forensics kit to get a vial of luminol.

He remembered seeing a cut on Jiang Lingjie’s finger earlier that day.

But they hadn’t detected any of his blood at the scene during the initial sweep.

Su Miaoyi looked at the item in his hand and raised an eyebrow.

’I was just thinking we needed that, and he’s already got it.’

He sprayed the reagent on the fishing line.

”Blood,” Lu Zhishen said.

”Let’s get it back for DNA testing,” Su Miaoyi said.

Zhuang Yanzheng gave her a thumbs-up as well.

Su Miaoyi raised an eyebrow.

Zhuang Yanzheng said, ”Let’s go down and check that wood carving.”

The three of them went downstairs.

Because its base was heavy, the wood carving had landed upright and was simply standing there.

There were indeed grooves on it from where the fishing line had been tied.

”First, we head back and run the DNA on the blood from the fishing line.” Zhuang Yanzheng took a photo of the wood carving.

Just as he finished, his phone rang.

It was Qi Feng.

The moment he answered, Qi Feng said, ”Captain Zhuang, Jiang Lingjie just died at the hospital.”

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