"It's not clear whether it was a gang crime," Zhu Ansheng paused and said:

"But I have a very vague feeling...... There may be more than one participant in this case, but the number of people should not be very large. ”

"Is there any basis for this?" Xia Liang asked.

Zhu Ansheng shook his head: "It's just intuition." ”

Silence ensued.

Xia Liang already knew the reason why Zhu Ansheng was troubled by this case, but he still didn't understand what the speed of snow melting in the cold storage had to do with the case itself.

When asked Zhu Ansheng, he just said:

"You'll find out in a moment. Anyway, you have nothing to do, so take advantage of this time to think about the reason for it. ”

This is tantamount to giving Xia Liang a test question. He thought that Zhu Ansheng had said that he was not suitable to be a policeman, and he secretly had a little bit of a competitive mind in his heart, so he really didn't ask, and sat aside and pondered.

The cold storage was quiet again. The darkness and cold seeped into his skin little by little, and only when he looked up at Zhu Ansheng's face that was pale by his mobile phone, did Xia Liang feel a little real.

He restrained himself from his thoughts, curled up on the ground, and fell asleep in a daze.

"Wake up."

Zhu Ansheng's voice came, and Xia Liang sat up, only to feel that his brain was drowsy.

"How long has it been......"

"It's 3:50 in the morning."

Xia Liang's eyes widened, and his face was full of disbelief:

"It's been so long?!"

He thought he had just taken a nap for a few minutes.

"Two and a half hours, to be exact."

Zhu Ansheng's expression was a little dignified, he reached out and touched the floor, and the phone screen shone wet fingers.

Cold storage has flooded.

He said:

"Now, the conclusion is in."

Xia Liang pursed his lips and sat upright, a little nervous.

"Xia Liang, do you remember the time of death of the deceased in the autopsy report?"

"Hmm...... Jiang experts said that the deceased died for at least 12 hours, that is, before 0:00 on the 11th, or around the time of the 11th. ”

Zhu Ansheng nodded and put his pipe to his mouth.

"It takes two and a half hours to turn off the power switch in the cold storage and the ground is damp. And Zhang Jianhong inspects the cold storage every day, and the time when he closes the door and goes upstairs is half past ten in the evening. That is to say, if he is attacked at the moment of closing the door, and the attacker turns off the cold storage switch as soon as possible, that night, the time when the cold storage floods is also at one o'clock at the earliest. ”

"That's true...... Is there anything wrong with that? Xia Liang was puzzled.

Zhu Ansheng slid the mobile phone, called up the function of the flashlight, and shone it at the door.

"The problem is with these footprints."

"Footprint ......"

Xia Liang muttered, his brows furrowing tighter and tighter. The next moment, the hairs all over his body exploded.

Zhu Ansheng looked at him:

"The victim died at 0:00. The victim's footprints must be left after 1 o'clock. ”

He continued, word for word:

"Dead people can't walk, dead people ...... Nor will it lie. ”

Xia Liang lost his mind:

"These footprints are not left by the deceased...... It's the footprints left by the murderer......"

After a pause, he began to re-analyze the case:

"What is now certain is that the deceased was killed between half past ten and mid-0, and the footprints were not left by the deceased, they should have been left by the murderer...... However, there is a very strange place, since the murderer left footprints, it means that he left the cold storage after the ground was damp, so why didn't he leave footprints towards the door? Could this trail of footprints towards cold storage be some kind of misleading clue......"

"Wrong."

Zhu Ansheng suddenly interrupted Xia Liang's muttering.

Xia Liang was stunned for a moment, but didn't react:

"Uh...... Wrong? Brother-in-law, what do you mean is wrong? ”

"It was wrong from the start."

"Huh?"

Zhu Ansheng turned his head and said quietly:

"Do you really think that the deceased was killed between half past ten and midnight?"

Xia Liang's eyes widened in surprise.

Zhu Ansheng knocked off the ash in his pipe and said lightly:

"You've been lured by the murderer's tricks."

He reached out and held up three fingers.

"Three doubts......

"First, it's an 'absolute chamber';

Second, why did the murderer choose the crime scene in cold storage? Why did he turn off the electric switch?

Third, no one can see that it is the murderer and not the footprints of the deceased, what do you think is the reason? ”

Xia Liang was a little stunned, and Zhu Ansheng smiled:

"Finally, one more hint for you......"

After saying that, he turned off the screen of his mobile phone, and the entire cold storage suddenly turned into darkness.

In the frighteningly deep darkness, fear crept in, and every sense, except sight, became sharpened. In the next instant, Xia Liang's shocked cry came from the darkness.

"Ah!!h

"I see! I see......"

"No one realized that it was the murderer's footprints, that was because the murderer deliberately wore the same style of shoes as the deceased, it was dark in the cold storage at that time, no one knew what the deceased looked like, in fact, it is entirely possible that the victim has been in a deep coma or a state of death from sleeping pills, and was placed in the corner of the warehouse, and the two suspects spent the night, accompanied them to knock on the door and call for help, and moved the shelf, in fact, it was not the victim, but the murderer himself!"

"The temperature of the cold storage is below zero, if you wear less clothes, you can stay here for one night, there is a chance of being frozen to death directly, turn off the electric switch, not only to ensure the survival of the two, but more importantly, because the murderer himself is also hiding inside, while ensuring that he will not be frozen to death, he can perfectly disguise himself as the deceased......"

"The most important point is that to create the illusion of a double secret room, it is impossible to establish only blocking the door with a shelf: as long as the murderer is a gang, several people can push the shelf open together outside the door, so the plastic box on the shelf is the key to the cold storage that cannot be opened from the outside and become a secret room. And in order to create this secret room, it is absolutely impossible for the murderer to just stand by in the corner, he plays the deceased, just to induce the two suspects to put the box on the shelf......"

With a flash of fire, Zhu Ansheng lit the tobacco in the pipe with a match and nodded:

"The reasoning is not bad. Choosing the location of the crime in the cold storage is all the key to creating this secret room. Not just to pretend to be the deceased, but also so that the medical examiner could not accurately determine the time of death of the corpse. The murderer's mind is quite meticulous. Of course, there are many doubts about this......

"Suspicious?" Xia Liang pondered slightly: "Do you mean that string of footprints?" ”

"That's one of the doubts."

"If the problem is footprints......" Xia Liang pinched his chin and frowned:

"Shouldn't that be the most subtle part of the murderer's layout? All of us ignored the details of the snowmelt time, if it weren't for the whimsical idea of your brother-in-law to sneak in, we wouldn't have found out that the footprints were actually left by the murderer, but would have been investigating the reason why the deceased didn't go back to the cold storage directly after moving the shelf...... This is tantamount to a huge smoke bomb that confuses the direction of the police investigation......"

Zhu Ansheng smiled faintly:

"Liang, you have turned cause and effect upside down."

"Huh?"

"It's not that I sneaked into the cold storage on a whim and found the flaws in the footprints, to be precise, it was this series of footprints that made me feel wrong, so I thought of the problem of snowmelt time and decided to dive into the cold storage to investigate."

Xia Liang was stunned.

Zhu Ansheng narrowed his eyes and said coldly:

That said, this is not the most subtle part of the murderer's layout, quite the opposite...... This is the biggest failure of the murderer's entire layout. If it weren't for this set of footprints, I wouldn't have suspected that the deceased was played by a murderer. ”

He paused, and his tone slowed down a little:

"However, this flaw always makes me feel very wrong, which is inconsistent with the murderer's current criminal experience, and it seems that there are some key clues hidden in it...... There must be something, there must be a reason to leave footprints......"

Xia Liang sighed, already aware of the gap in ability between himself and Zhu Ansheng. He heard some clues from Zhu Ansheng's words, remembered what he had said to Expert Jiang during the day, and asked:

"Brother-in-law, you seem to have been emphasizing that this murderer is thoughtful and quite smart, and yesterday too, Expert Jiang said that the deceased left a dental record, and you immediately felt that the murderer did it intentionally, why is this?"

Zhu Ansheng touched the stubble on his face and smiled a little:

"There is no conclusive evidence, at best it is intuition."

He said:

"When you first told me about this case, I kept thinking about why the two people who were locked up in the cold storage were the owner of the fish shop and the security guard on the street......

"If the murderer's intention is to murder and plant a stolen crime, he should never choose these two people as the target of the blame, as Xiao Jiang said, they are the permanent residents of the Huangsha seafood market, and they eat mixed rice in this area, and the suspicion of being a murderer is not high congenitally, because once a crime is committed, it is easy to find out the clues. The only thing these two people have in common is that they are very close to this cold storage, and it is effortless to trick into the cold storage......"

"However, if this is a well-prepared murder, the murderer cannot be lazy with such details, and it is not difficult to trick other unrelated people into cold storage through other forms, since they can already bring the deceased over...... So, I had a less accurate guess. ”

"What speculation?" Xia Liang asked.

"The murderer doesn't seem to have time - he, or rather, they, seem to be desperate to do something......" Zhu Ansheng said in a deep voice: "I hope my speculation is false, if it is true, it also means that the perpetrator is an extremely perverted criminal genius." This case should not be as simple as it seems on the surface. I have a hunch that soon we will get further clues......"

Xia Liang was speechless. At this moment, he clearly felt that Zhu Ansheng was the real pervert.

So far, he has made perfect use of every detail and clue found in the course of the investigation, like a sophisticated and orderly reasoning machine, connecting these rambling clues with the most reasonable logic, and slowly weaving the web called "truth......

Xia Liang understood that at this time, Zhu Ansheng was already standing on a huge chessboard that a criminal police officer of his level could not touch, and was engaged in a silent and fierce game with the criminal he had never met.

He couldn't understand what Zhu Ansheng had done, but when he saw the light reflected in his pupils when Zhu Ansheng lit the match again, his blood boiled inexplicably.

He hadn't seen a look like that in years. He remembered rumors that had been rampant in the police station.

There are no gods in the criminal investigation world. Both because they don't believe in the existence of gods, and because they have a good life.

"Let's go."

"Huh?" Xia Liang didn't react.

"What time is it, why don't you go home to sleep, what are you doing in a daze." Zhu Ansheng stood up, rubbed his nose, yawned, and began to pack his things, looking lazy like a decadent otaku who clocked in on time and went home.

Xia Liang smiled bitterly, didn't say anything, stood up, and retracted the foot he had just raised.

"Brother-in-law."

"Huh?"

"It's wet on the ground."

"I'm not blind."

"What if you leave footprints?"

"I don't know."

"You haven't thought about how to deal with it?"

Zhu Ansheng was silent, turned around and picked his nose, pretending that nothing had happened.

"......" The corners of Xia Liang's mouth twitched: "Then what else do you want me to take the blocking tape?" When the time comes, our footprints will be clear, and everyone knows that we sneaked in in the middle of the night to destroy the scene, right? ”

"I'm not here to put you at ease...... Hey hey ......"

"Peace of mind! Is there such a pit brother-in-law as you? You've left your job, and I've just joined the team......"

"Otherwise, don't you think what I brought you here for, just to let you explain the case to someone and make up for it?" Zhu Anzhi said confidently: "It is not wrong for young people to do more performance." I'm all for your good! ”

"You just want to drag me into the water and use me as a shield, right?"

"Don't you see through it."

While the two were arguing, they tiptoed to leave two strings of only pointe marks in the cold storage, Xia Liang thought of Xing Guangkun's angry face tomorrow, and his face was so aggrieved that he was about to cry, and finally drove Zhu Ansheng home first with a sad face. I wish Ansheng a good sleep in the co-pilot.

was put on the side by his brother-in-law, and Xia Liang spent the second half of the night tossing and turning.

But the next day, Captain Xing's anger did not come as expected.

Because the case is just as Zhu Ansheng predicted - there has been a leap forward.

Through a mother and daughter who came to the police station to report the incident, the police confirmed the identity of the deceased.