Hearing this, Lü Qingqing finally understood why Yang Yuegu had reacted that way when she heard that a male corpse had been found in the well.
This was indeed too bizarre.
The corpse mysteriously disappeared, and when it reappeared, it was in a different location and had two holes in it.
What was the point of this?
A zombie going to fight?
Yu Yian stood aside with a grim expression. Unlike Hu Jia and Lü Qingqing, the two of them knew Yue Gu and saw her through a slightly biased lens.
In Yu Yian's eyes, this Yang Yuegu was a licentious widow, and she couldn't say anything good. Moreover, there was a "walking corpse."
This was utterly outrageous!
"Captain Hu, what do you think?" Yu Yian already knew Hu Jia's identity. Being a criminal investigation captain in a major city's police bureau, his abilities were not to be underestimated.
Therefore, his words were naturally respectful.
"You don't believe their story?" Hu Jia looked at Yu Yian.
Yu Yian looked troubled. He wanted to believe them, but who would believe such a story?
Hu Jia understood Yu Yian's dilemma. Indeed, this story was a bit far-fetched.
Tong Meng looked at the people present and had an idea. "I don't believe it either; it's too fake."
Then, she turned to Lü Qingqing and said, "It seems you believe this explanation. Then it's simple, why? You need to convince not only me but also provide Officer Yu with a reasonable explanation. After all, you're not the one who has to report this with the materials."
Lü Qingqing knew that Tong Meng was making a valid point.
Indeed, if Yu Yian were to report such material, he would likely not get any credit and would be ridiculed.
"Why do I believe his words? Let's analyze the deceased's clothing first," Lü Qingqing said. Firstly, the deceased was wearing a wedding dress, and no man would willingly wear a wedding dress.
If Yue Gu's account was false, then when she and Dai Bihua stabbed the deceased, the deceased should have been wearing his own clothes.
However, the wedding dress also had two stab wounds. This indicated that the deceased was stabbed in the back while wearing a wedding dress. From this perspective, it aligned with Yue Gu's claim of the body being clothed after death.
Looking at the wedding dress itself, there were abrasions on the elbows and knees, meaning the deceased had crawled on the ground while wearing the wedding dress. Combined with the contusions on the deceased's palms and the base of his hands, it was clear that he had fought with someone before death.
"Look at their hands, faces, and the furnishings in the room," Lü Qingqing said, taking Yang Yuegu's hand, which was delicate and fair.
If he had fought with Yang Yuegu, she wouldn't have been able to defeat an adult male. If he had fought with Dai Bihua, even if he was no match for them, Yang Yuegu and Dai Bihua wouldn't have been unharmed.
"Also, all the furnishings in this room show no signs of being moved or transported," Lü Qingqing said. Unless this wasn't the primary crime scene. But the problem lay here: Yang Yuegu's house was near a well, or there were other places suitable for discarding a body. Why would Yang Yuegu transport the body two streets away to discard it? The town was so small; wasn't she afraid of being seen halfway?
"Therefore, I suspect the real murder scene was near that well!"
Yu Yian found her reasoning plausible.
Indeed, if the killer dumped the body in the well, it meant he had no intention of concealing the existence of the corpse. Did he not want to hide the fact that someone had died here?
No!
It was likely that he was in a hurry and couldn't find any other place to dispose of the body.
"However, if the killer could steal the body from Yue Gu, why would he worry about not finding a place to dispose of it? Stealing a body is easier to be discovered than disposing of it?" Tong Meng disagreed with Lü Qingqing's analysis.
"Who told you it was a corpse?" Tong Meng's lips curved up. "I've seen it. When the deceased was stabbed with a sharp weapon, he was still alive!"
"Alive?" everyone was shocked.
Yang Yuegu and Dai Bihua couldn't believe it: "Impossible, we checked his breath, and there was indeed no air."
"It must have been feigned death, or a temporary cessation of breathing causing unconsciousness," Lü Qingqing said. The observable signs of life-related damage before death mainly included bleeding, tissue contraction, swelling, scab formation, wound infection, and foreign body migration, but bleeding was the most significant.
"It has several characteristics. Due to the pressure in the human blood vessels before death, there is a larger amount of bleeding after the blood vessels rupture. Due to blood pressure, the blood flowing out of the blood vessels can be 'pressed' into the interstitial spaces around the blood vessels, forming hematoma infiltration, and finally, it is easy to coagulate."
If the body was injured by a sharp object within an hour of death, there would be visible bleeding in the lower part of the body, but not much. If it was stabbed within 2.5 hours of death, bleeding from post-mortem injuries in the upper part of the body would be difficult to see.
The deceased's wounds completely matched the characteristics of ante-mortem injuries. "Therefore, the man should have left Yue Gu's house on his own after waking up."
There was an uproar among the crowd. Only Hu Jia smiled at Lü Qingqing; he loved people with strong professional abilities.
Tong Meng was momentarily stunned. She had to admit that Lü Qingqing was formidable. For the first time, she felt that opposing Lü Qingqing was a mistake.
However, the arrow was already on the string, and there was no turning back.
...
The next step was to find the primary crime scene and then canvass residents or shops around the well to see if there was any discovery.
"I really didn't expect Yue Gu to be like this now..." Hu Jia was a little hard to accept, after all, she was someone he had known since childhood.
If Yang Yuegu had found a new man and had a stable relationship, he would have fully supported Yue Gu remarrying. However, now she was entangled with multiple men, even implicated in a murder case. He wondered what Uncle Yang would think if he knew about this.
"Alas, don't overthink it. Everyone's life trajectory is different. We don't understand what Yue Gu has experienced over the years, so we cannot judge the path she has taken," Lü Qingqing comforted him. She also couldn't understand why Yue Gu had become like this, but since they weren't close, she viewed the matter more objectively.
"Mmm!" Hu Jia nodded. "If someone intent on investigating this case, they will eventually find her. If we hadn't come to get the ledger, she might have truly been unjustly imprisoned."
Lü Qingqing smiled. This could be considered fate.
Thinking this, Lü Qingqing reached out and touched the cloth bag at her waist.
Huh?
She patted it up, down, left, and right. Why wasn't there the outline of a book?
Lü Qingqing's expression changed. She ripped open the bag's opening. Indeed, the ledger was gone.
"It was Tong Meng!" Hu Jia was the first to think of her. No wonder Tong Meng had asked Lü Qingqing to recount her judgments about the deceased earlier. When people are recounting something they feel strongly about, their minds tend to be overly focused.
The cloth bag was on the table at the time. It was likely that while everyone was following Lü Qingqing to check for signs of a struggle in Yue Gu's house, Tong Meng had casually taken the ledger.
"She really has skillful methods," Lü Qingqing blamed herself for her carelessness. She had finally obtained the ledger, only for it to be taken by Tong Meng. "No, I'm going to find her. If she doesn't hand over the ledger, I'll beat her until she calls me mother."
Hu Jia chuckled, amused by her. "Forget it, don't go. That ledger was just a duplicate. The original is still at Yue Gu's house, isn't it?"
Generally, when doing business, people keep two copies of their ledgers to prevent them from being lost.
The ledger of the pawnshop was actually a pawn record book, which recorded the items pawned, the prices, and the dates.
When Yue Gu sold the pawnshop, she naturally had to hand over the pawn record book to the buyer. Originally, Yue Gu had retrieved the ledger from the pawnshop after learning that Hu Jia needed information from it.
Later, to prevent the ledger from being handed over under Tong Meng's nose, Lü Qingqing came up with this plan to go to the pawnshop again to get a duplicate.
This way, no matter who Tong Meng followed at the time, they could obtain the pawn record book.
It was just that they didn't expect the pawn record book to be lost now.