At 2:19 a.m. on April 13, 2011, three fire trucks roared through the dark night to the Xinkang community in the southern suburbs of the city. Many people were awakened from their sleep, and an ominous atmosphere hung over the city.

By the time firefighters arrived at the scene, the fire had spread to three floors. Smoke billowed from the fire scene, and the flames soared into the sky, and in the distance, you could hear the unstoppable crying of babies and the tearing cries of residents living on the top floor.

More than a dozen people who had been awakened gathered under the residential building where the fire broke out. Some of them were draped in quilts, some were wrapped in coats, some were wearing thin pajamas, and some of them had no time to take anything, but only a pair of underwear, and ran out of the house shirtless, shivering in the cool night.

Most of the residents who ran out of the building lived below the fourth floor, while the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors where the fire was fierce and some people were trapped in the flames and could not escape.

Heavily armed firefighters used high-pressure water cannons to extinguish the fire, while people searched the corridors to rescue trapped residents. After about half an hour, the fire was basically under control.

Firefighters rescued 13 trapped people, including a five-month-old baby and an elderly man over 80. Of these people, except for a middle-aged woman who was close to the fire point, she was severely poisoned with carbon monoxide and fell into a deep coma, no one else was in danger of life. But in room 503 on the fifth floor, firefighters found two bodies that had been badly burned.

"Squad leader......" said the firefighter who found the body with a solemn face, "those two people died strangely. Looks like we're going to have to call the Interpol team to deal with this......"

"Is it a homicide?" The squad leader frowned in displeasure, feeling very angry in his heart.

The firefighter nodded, "I'm afraid so." I'm not sure about the exact cause of death, but I think the situation at the scene is very similar to a posthumous cremation ......."

Twenty minutes later, a team of people from the criminal police detachment of R City hurriedly arrived at the scene of the fire. The danger has been ruled out, and the investigators quickly put on their equipment and entered the suspected murder scene - Room 503 in turn.

It is a two-bedroom home of about 60 square meters, with a small living room, only a charred two-seater sofa, a wooden dining table and two matching chairs. The fire started in the bedroom on the north side, and everything in the room was burned beyond recognition by the fire, and the smell of burnt corpses was faintly discernible in the unpleasant smell.

When firefighters entered the scene, the door to the bedroom was closed. Both bodies were found in this room. One of the bodies was lying on his back on his back on the bed, covered with a quilt, and was supposed to be sleeping at the time of the crime, while the other was curled up on the floor of the room, appearing to be struggling in pain.

Although the fire burned away numerous traces of physical evidence, the investigators found some information in the room.

First, the fire started at the head of the bed in this bedroom, and the cause of the fire was deliberate arson. Based on the wreckage of the lighter and the empty wine bottles found by the investigators at the scene of the fire, it can be preliminarily inferred that the arsonist probably used high-grade liquor as a combustible substance and ignited the flammable items on the bed.

Second, investigators found splatters of blood near the head of the bed where the fire started, and speculated that the deceased on the bed may have been attacked and killed before the fire started. In other words, the arsonist is likely to be a murderer, and he set the fire to destroy the body.

Third, blood stains were also detected on the floor where another body was lying down, and it is speculated that the deceased, like the deceased lying on the bed, had been brutally killed before the fire.

Fourth, investigators found signs that the two bedrooms in Room 503 had been turned over, and suspected that the cause of the case was burglary, which was later escalated to homicide and arson......

In order to find out the identities of the two deceased, the police immediately found the landlord of the rented house, Mr. Li.

At half past nine in the morning of April 13, in the office of the criminal police detachment of R City, Qiao Sheng and Mr. Li sat face to face. Originally, his house was burned down like that, which already made him very depressed, but there was a horrific murder in the house he rented out. Not to mention that he and his family will not live in this house from now on, it is not easy to rent it out to others or sell it.

With a sad face, he sighed and handed over the contract signed by the tenant and a copy of his ID card to Qiao Sheng, and kept muttering, "What is this called?" Why did such an unfortunate thing make me stand up......"

Qiao Sheng ignored him, took a quick glance at the copy, and asked suspiciously, "Is there only one tenant?" ”

"yes, there was only one person who came to rent the house at that time." Mr. Lee replied inexplicably that if he knew that two people had died in the house at once, he might faint on the spot.

"You rented out this house two weeks ago?" Qiao Sheng continued to ask.

"yes, this old house has been empty for a while. My wife said that it was a waste to have an idle house, so it was better to rent it out to earn some living expenses, but I didn't expect this to happen so soon......"

"Did you go back and check on the situation after you rented out the house?"

"Nope." Mr. Li waved his hand, "The tenant paid the rent for three months at one time, and the payment in the future will be through online transfer, and there will be no special circumstances to go back." ”

"So, you haven't seen anyone else in the house either?"

"Others?" Mr. Li was stunned for a moment, and his heart became more and more uneasy. He rubbed his hands anxiously and asked nervously, "I said Officer Qiao, you have mentioned this issue more than once, is there something you are hiding from me?" ”

Qiao Sheng glanced at him sympathetically, "You don't need to know the specific details, now you just need to answer my question truthfully......"

Afterwards, the police investigated the identity information provided by Mr. Li and thought that they could successfully find the source of the body, at least the identity of one of the deceased, so that they could find out the identity of the other through one deceased, only to be surprised to find that the identity document provided by the tenant was fake.

This result is really unexpected, but it also reminds the police of one thing: under normal circumstances, people will not use false information to rent a house, unless the person has special circumstances and does not want to reveal his true identity to outsiders. So, is it possible that the identity of this tenant is in question in the first place?

Following this line of thought, the police really matched the identity information of these two people in the DNA database.

It turned out that both of them had criminal records. One is Hu Guang, nicknamed "Tiger", born in 1958, from Shantou, Guangdong, since the 80s of the last century, he has been in the number several times. He is a repeat offender in robbery and theft, and the last time he was in jail was for robbing a food supermarket with a knife and robbing more than 8,000 in cash. Since his release from prison in 2001, he has not been heard from.

Another person, the tenant who came forward to negotiate with Mr. Li, is named Zhou Qiang, nicknamed "Lynx", born in 1970 and from Changde, Hunan. This person also has a lot of criminal records, he has done theft, sale of stolen goods, and fraud, and can be said to be a "well-rounded talent". Between 1997 and 2001, the lynx and the tiger served their sentences in the same cell, and it was said that they had a good relationship at that time. This is also the reason why two people will appear in the same rental house.

After figuring out the identity of the deceased, the next thing gradually became apparent.

Combined with the situation at the scene of the crime, the autopsy report of the forensic doctor and the investigation results of the investigators, Qiao Sheng restored the situation on the night of the crime and the cause and effect of the whole incident at the case discussion meeting.

The case occurred between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on April 13, 2011, when the killer slit the throat of the lynx while it was asleep in bed, and cut the deceased's carotid artery with a clean knife, causing him to bleed to death.

After the lynx died, the tiger was also killed in the same room by a single blow to someone who had his throat cut on his back. From the angle of the murderer's knife and the location of the blood splash, the tiger should have squatted on the ground with his back to the murderer when the crime occurred. In other words, the murderer's knife was attacked from behind.

Under what circumstances is there already a dead person in the room, and the other person can sit defenselessly on the ground, with his back to the murderer, completely exposing his weak point in front of the murderer? The answer is that Tiger and the murderer were originally in the same group, and Tiger trusted each other very much. The lynx was killed by the two men in a concerted effort, but then something happened that caused the tiger to be betrayed by his trusted accomplices and killed from the shadows.

The reason for this conclusion is that on the afternoon of April 12, 2011, a brutal burglary occurred in the Jincheng community of R City. The deceased was a 64-year-old woman who had her throat cut at home.

According to the wife of the deceased, they had a piece of porcelain from the Ming Dynasty hidden in their home, which was priceless, and they were trying to find someone to sell it recently. The old couple are usually very careful and never open the door to strangers. There was no sign of the door lock being broken, and he didn't know how the killer got into their house, let alone where he got the news that their house was hiding antiques. The old man thought about it later, maybe the buyers and second-hand dealers he contacted accidentally leaked the news and brought them death.

The police sent investigators to visit the antique market and the antique black market in R City under the guise of antiquities dealers, and through inquiry, a man with a similar image to the bobcat gradually surfaced.

Things became clear.

On the afternoon of April 12, 2011, a criminal gang consisting of a tiger, a bobcat, and a murderer X broke into the house, killed the old woman, robbed the old woman of antique porcelain, and successfully sold it on the black market in exchange for a large amount of money.

These three people had some conflicts because of the issue of sharing the spoils, and secretly formed a split. Judging from the outcome of the case, Murderer X first sided with Tiger. Since the three men did not fall out immediately when they divided the spoils, but continued to live in the same rental house, it shows that the three of them have reached some kind of agreement on the surface. However, in reality, Tiger and Killer X secretly form an alliance to attack the Bobcat in the middle of the night and swallow its share of the property.

It's just that Tiger's trusted murderer X betrayed him at the last minute. After the two conspired to kill the bobcat, the murderer X took advantage of the tiger's unpreparedness and slit his throat from behind, and one person swept away all his belongings, set fire to the house, and erased all information about himself, making his identity still a mystery to this day.

Including the burglary and homicide that occurred in the city of R on April 12, there were six similar cases nationwide between 2005 and 2011, with as many as eight victims. These cases spanned six provinces and cities across the country, and the murderers were extremely cruel and cunning, and the police have not yet found the whereabouts of the murderer.

Through an arson and cremation case, the criminal gang that has been wandering for six years finally reveals the true face of Lushan, but the murderer X, who betrayed his accomplices and killed the tiger and the bobcat, has become a greater threat to the police.

Obviously, compared to the tiger and the bobcat, the murderer X has a deeper scheming. Through his handling of crime scenes, it can be seen that his modus operandi is mature and sophisticated, and he is very cool-headed, making him a very formidable opponent. Considering the tiger's trust in him, Qiao Sheng believes that this person should also have a criminal record, and it is likely that he has also served a sentence in the same prison as the tiger.

At that time, Qiao Sheng never dreamed that the person who committed such a crime would be just a fourteen-year-old child. He didn't expect that when he encountered this murderer again a few years later, this person had grown into a demon that was more difficult to deal with than Wei Chiliang, setting off a new round of bloody storm in R City......