Chapter 974

Jiang Yuan assembled his team and took Cui Qi and others along to secretly survey Jianmen Academy.

The Public Security Bureau had no shortage of criminal investigation personnel; strictly speaking, someone like Cui Qi couldn’t even be called talented—his shortcomings were too glaring.

Jiang Yuan primarily trusted Cui Qi because he was familiar with him, and moreover, Cui Qi had the special skill of exhuming corpses—any anomaly in this headless case was a good thing.

Cui Qi placed even greater importance on anomalies. Come on, Jiang Yuan had dismantled an entire listed company just to save his men—though, truthfully, there was no need to go that far in “helping”—but Cui Qi could not help but accept this gesture of goodwill.

Everyone had prepared individually, and when it came time to drive, the convoy consisted of over twenty vehicles.

Cui Qi looked like he wanted to summon every technical investigator in the bureau.

With so many vehicles driving together, it could no longer be called a secret survey, so they specifically assigned personnel and parked most of the vehicles at the nearby public parking lot.

Jiang Yuan had only two vehicles and eight people total, parking outside Jianmen Academy.

Jiang Yuan took Mu Zhiyang and Gao Yuyan; Cui Qi took his subordinate Li Jiang—five people total—entered Jianmen Academy’s residential compound without any obstruction.

Jianmen Academy was a fifty-year-old residential complex, once a unit compound, but after institutional reforms and the downsizing of enterprises and public institutions, it had been fully handed over to society and was now merely a poorly secured, geographically advantageous, yet aging cluster of buildings.

“The crime occurred in Building 2, the one on the right as you enter,” Cui Qi had already reviewed the case files.

Jiang Yuan nodded, confirmed the address, and observed his surroundings.

The difficulty of the Jianmen Academy case lay precisely in how simple it was.

Jianmen Academy had four buildings total, all five-story corridor-style apartments arranged in a Z-shape, ensuring no mutual obstruction. Building 2 sat at the lower right corner of the Z, about ten meters from the compound wall.

The victim, Zhang Xiaoya, lived on the fourth floor of Building 2.

The structure and population of the corridor-style apartments were also extremely simple.

The apartments resembled a row of dormitories, each unit a long rectangular room with one or two small internal partitions, no private bathrooms or kitchens.

Jianmen Academy’s corridor-style apartments were second-generation, with two larger bathrooms per floor and two kitchens, offering slightly more space.

The staircases and corridors were externally attached—a long corridor with stairs running down the center.

In short, Jianmen Academy’s layout, inside and out, was completely visible.

From below, you could see the upper-floor corridors and people inside; with good positioning, you could even see people in the kitchens.

The corridor was straight as well—whether viewed from the stairs or either end, anyone standing along it was clearly visible.

Furthermore, in the 1990s, Jianmen Academy’s buildings were constructed by the unit itself; although some housing swaps, inheritances, and sales occurred, overall, all residents knew each other—people in the same building were at least fifty percent familiar, and those on the same floor were over seventy percent.

The victim, Zhang Xiaoya, was killed, according to the forensic assessment at the time, around 10 a.m.—a relatively quiet hour in the compound, as most people were at work, but still, some family members remained.

Yet, after repeatedly interviewing every resident, not a single eyewitness was found.

This inevitably shifted the investigation toward the possibility of a perpetrator known to the victim—especially the fourth-floor residents, as only they would be unremarkable on the fourth-floor corridor.

Any unfamiliar outsider would have been noticed.

But the results clearly did not support the special task force’s original judgment.

Jiang Yuan and Cui Qi walked back and forth several times on the fourth floor of Building 2, finally drawing the attention of an elderly woman.

“Which unit are you from?” The woman looked to be in her sixties, relatively young for the compound.

The current population structure differed from over twenty years ago: fewer people lived in the same corridor-style buildings, more strangers came and went; due to the lack of private kitchens and bathrooms, original residents had mostly moved out, and new tenants changed frequently—no longer the once-common seventy-percent familiarity among floormates.

Cui Qi noticed the woman’s age and replied with a question: “Are you the owner of this building? Did you live here before, or did you buy it later?”

“Who buys housing here? Everyone’s waiting for renovation. They keep saying renovation’s coming, but it never happens—now we’re just waiting for demolition.” Beijing’s elderly women still loved asserting their old-Beijing identity: “This apartment was allocated to me by my father. After he passed, my older brothers, who had better conditions, gave it to me. Now it’s used as a school district house for my granddaughter—she eats lunch here, naps, and I take her home at night.”

“This building hasn’t been renovated or demolished because of that case, right?” Cui Qi mentioned a local rumor.

The woman’s expression changed: “I used to think it wasn’t related, but now I think it might be. Hey, why does this affect us? The neighboring compound installed elevators, but because a murder happened here, they refused to install any. Demolition? Forget it—we’re in such a prime location, why shouldn’t we be demolished?”

“So, that case was never solved?”

“Who knows? Probably not.”

“Were you living here when the case happened?”

“Yes. I lived with my parents and several brothers. It was only after that incident that I finally decided to buy my own place.”

“What kind of person do you think the killer was?”

The woman didn’t hesitate: “Hard to say, probably a factory worker.”

“Why?”

“Because Zhang Xiaoya kept yelling ‘layoff and reemployment.’ Think about it—if you were a factory worker, would you want to be laid off and reemployed? How many people wanted to stab him? And wasn’t he stabbed in the end?”

“I remember several people were arrested back then—those who had shouted that phrase,” Cui Qi recalled the case files.

The woman said: “Zhang Xiaoya was stabbed during work hours—workers were all on the job, where would they find time to stab him?” She raised her head again and asked: “Which unit are you from?”

“We’re police!” Cui Qi said, smiling solemnly, watching for the woman’s reaction.

“Are you reopening this case again?” The woman frowned, showing no sign of welcome as expected.

Cui Qi paused: “Has someone else reopened this case before?”

“You guys keep reopening it every few years—I’ve joined several groups already.” The woman eyed Cui Qi suspiciously: “Where’s your ID?”

An elderly Beijing woman scrutinizing you carried a certain pressure.

Cui Qi couldn’t help but chuckle twice, showed her his credentials, and continued asking questions.

Finally, he annoyed her, then questioned a few passersby, and checked the group she mentioned.

They were all created by former members of the original special task force.

Cui Qi sighed: “Probably like us—they secretly investigate every few years, dare not make a public move, just quietly dig around, hoping to gather enough evidence before reporting upward. Unfortunately, they never gathered any.”

Cui Qi spoke seriously, though his words were blunt.

Jiang Yuan nodded.

Cui Qi added, “Most of the original task force members involved in this case have retired. Now, reopening it depends mostly on interrogation results—and the suspect’s behavior.”

Cui Qi was describing the standard procedure for solving cold homicide cases.

For a case over twenty years old, most evidence has vanished—such cases rely heavily on the suspect’s conscience awakening or a tip from someone close to them.

If the interrogating officer can get the suspect to confess outright, that’s ideal. If not, the suspect must at least cooperate by revealing some information; if even that fails, such cold cases become nearly impossible.

Thus, Cui Qi placed most of his hope on the person who owned the fingerprint Jiang Yuan had discovered.

Jiang Yuan shook his head slightly: “He won’t necessarily confess. If he does, he becomes a murder suspect—but I doubt he’s the one who killed the victim.”

Cui Qi held his opinion on the first point and asked only about the second: “How do you know he didn’t kill the victim?”

“Wang Futing—the suspect I identified—left his fingerprint on the compound wall, but there was no blood on the wall. Based on the victim’s wounds and position when he fell, he resisted to some degree. If Wang Futing had participated in the murder, his clothes and hands would have easily been stained with blood—the wall couldn’t have remained so clean.”

“So this Wang Futing might be completely unrelated to the case?” Cui Qi grew agitated: “I told you—things can’t be this easy!”