Chapter 31

Wei Zhengguo went out in the afternoon and didn't return until the next morning with heavier eye bags and deeper wrinkles.

The person he brought back with him was a young man under 20 years old, short and thin, with an indifferent look on his face, only his eyes turning very fast.

After all the procedures were in order, Wei Zhengguo immediately took the person into the interrogation room.

The interrogation room of the criminal police team is located on the first floor and is just a small room of 30 or 40 square meters.

There are iron railings in the middle of the room, separated by iron doors and iron locks. Half of the room near the door of the iron railings is the interrogation area, with desks, computers, and chairs. And at the inner end is the suspect restraint area, with only a lonely interrogation chair.

The interrogation chair is affectionately known in the industry as the "tiger bench." The chair is made of all steel, the lower end is fixed to the ground, the chair legs are equipped with foot rings, which just happen to surround the suspect's ankles, the armrests are equipped with hand rings, which surround the suspect's wrists, and the backrest is hung with police ropes, which can tie the suspect's body to the chair.

This set of restraint devices not only prevents the suspect from suddenly attacking others, but is also used to prevent him from self-harm.

For the police team, any injury in the interrogation room for any reason needs to be treated with caution, and it is not something that can be explained away in a simple sentence or two.

"Open it." Wei Zhengguo supported the suspect with his hand and signaled his colleague to open the door.

Click.

The iron lock and iron door opened.

Wei Zhengguo took the suspect inside and signaled his colleague to close the door.

Click.

The iron door and iron lock closed.

After the two sounds, the indifference on the suspect's face had quietly disappeared.

Wei Zhengguo then pointed to the tiger bench and said: "Sit in."

The suspect swallowed: "Why? What crime did I commit?"

"Less nonsense." Wei Zhengguo's brows furrowed, enough to hold a lamb skewer without it falling. This time he didn't indulge the other party, and together with a colleague, he easily restrained the person into the interrogation chair.

There were a few more "clicks," all the locks were closed, and the suspect's brows couldn't help but furrow, looking like he could hold a cotton swab.

Click.

Click, click.

Wei Zhengguo and his colleague opened the iron door and went out, closed the door, and sat on the office chair opposite.

The walls of the interrogation room are extremely thick and sound-absorbing. After closing the outer door, the whole room was silent.

A silence that makes people panic.

Even for those who have been in the interrogation room, coming in again, their emotions are still suppressed.

Wei Zhengguo kept a straight face and let his colleague ask first.

After the routine name and age, seeing that the suspect's emotions were a little stable, Wei Zhengguo said gloomily: "Lü Xin, do you know how we caught you?"

"I... you caught the wrong person." Lü Xin stiffened his neck.

"People leave traces, geese leave sounds. Now that technology is so developed, do you really think we don't know what you did?" Wei Zhengguo's voice raised, saying: "I don't need a confession to send you in. If you don't confess, you will be sentenced longer."

This kind of talk is half true and half false. There are indeed cases of conviction with zero confession now, and there are not a few of them, but compared to physical evidence, the power and value of a confession are still greater. Not to mention anything else, even if the leader asks, the first thing they ask is "Have they confessed?", and the answer the case-handling police officer most hopes to give is naturally "They have confessed."

Today's case is even more special. Wei Zhengguo hopes to use a small case to pull out a big case, and he not only does not have enough evidence for the big case, but the evidence for the small case is also insufficient to convict.

Although Jiang Yuan matched Lü Xin through incomplete fingerprints, the requirements for conviction are higher than the requirements for investigation. Investigation only requires 8 feature points to match, while fingerprint identification requires 13 identical feature points. Just this one point, the incomplete fingerprint is not enough.

Not to mention, fingerprints as indirect evidence cannot prove guilt alone.

However, Wei Zhengguo's face showed no anxiety or difficulty at all. All that could be seen were wrinkles and darkness.

"Have you ever been cracked down on and handled by public security organs?" Wei Zhengguo asked knowing the answer. The fingerprints were matched through this.

Lü Xin continued to be silent.

"I'm asking you a question." The police officer next to Wei Zhengguo scolded.

Lü Xin was startled, waited a few seconds, and then said: "I have been."

Precisely because he had been cracked down on, he knew that "leniency for confession, severity for resistance" was true, especially when it reached the trial stage, severity for resistance meant heavier treatment, which would likely mean several more years of imprisonment.

Similarly, this kind of information is recorded, and he cannot hide it.

Wei Zhengguo took over, his voice neither high nor low, and asked: "What for?"

"Isn't it all handled..."

"Whatever I ask you, you say."

Lü Xin tightened his face, waited for a while, and then said: "Just fighting, detention. I've also taken other people's things."

"Because you lit the restaurant's kitchen, so you fought with people, right?"

"Yes, it was just an accident, they were relentless." Lü Xin looked very disdainful.

Wei Zhengguo curled his lips. The information of the police officer handling the previous case was insufficient. Obviously, he was fooled by this guy and failed to dig deeper. A suspect in an arson case who lit a small restaurant's kitchen, how could it be an accident? It was clearly that after running into the city, his hands were itchy.

Tapping the table lightly, Wei Zhengguo said calmly: "You lied."

Lü Xin looked at Wei Zhengguo innocently.

"You didn't accidentally light the restaurant kitchen; you intentionally committed arson. Your fingerprints are on the oil bottle at the scene." Wei Zhengguo looked at Lü Xin with sharp eyes and signaled the police officer next to him to show the photo.

Across the railing, the breakpoints on the fingerprints were not very clear, just as if it were a complete fingerprint.

"That was... that was when I was fighting, I grabbed the oil bottle."

"What did you grab the oil bottle for?"

"I just wanted to hit someone, but then I put it down. I didn't use the oil bottle to hit anyone either." Lü Xin answered fluently.

Wei Zhengguo smiled and said: "Because you wanted to use the oil bottle to light a fire, right?"

Lü Xin's eyes flashed, and he hurriedly said: "No such thing."

"You quite like setting fires, right?"

"No."

"Then how do you explain the fingerprints I found at this ignition point?" Wei Zhengguo took out another fingerprint chart and said slowly: "Once is a coincidence, but two or three times, can it be a coincidence? Do you think the judicial system is stupid?"

Lü Xin's lips moved, and the expression on his face could no longer be held.

He has already started to regret why he didn't wear gloves at the beginning... But when the interest arises, where can there be gloves around? Besides, it's not convenient to carry them, and it's easy to be suspected if seen.

Wei Zhengguo waited for a long enough time, then used a voice with great pressure and said: "Speak."

"I... I didn't..."

"If you don't confess, I will convict you with fingerprints."

"No, I..."

Wei Zhengguo "slapped" the table and said: "Speak!"

Lü Xin's body shook, hesitated for a few seconds, looked at the two, and finally said: "I didn't really want to set a fire. I just felt unhappy with that waste collection station. I happened to be smoking, so I just lit the paper..."

In the recent period, he only had this one experience of arson, and the loss caused was not great. Not long after he left, the fire was extinguished. It is estimated that it was either the boss of the waste collection station who extinguished the fire himself, or some enthusiastic masses somewhere.

For this level of case, according to Lü Xin's understanding, it shouldn't be sentenced too severely.

Wei Zhengguo and his colleague looked at each other and quietly exchanged glances.

The case Lü Xin confessed to obviously did not belong to any of the cases they had mastered.

This shows that the Lü Xin in front of them is a repeat offender who has committed more cases.

Wei Zhengguo's heart moved slightly, but no expression was revealed on his face. Looking at Lü Xin, his voice was cold: "Tell me in the order of time and place."

"Yes. In March this year, Xihong District, the waste collection station in Wulipu." Since Lü Xin started talking, his expression relaxed instead, and he confessed one by one.