The man I identified as the murderer seemed surprisingly calm, and the girl standing next to him who looked like the younger sister of the Lin family said in surprise: "Tiezhu, is it really you? How is it possible!"
That's right, the murderer I identified was Zhao Tiezhu, who I had excluded from the list of suspects at the beginning! Just because of a sentence I overheard when I first talked to him, I was completely wrong from beginning to end!
Zhao Tiezhu did not get anxious in the face of the villagers' questioning eyes, but smiled at me and said, "Ji Wen, I have been pretty good to you since you came to our Heishan Village. Why are you wrongly accusing me?"
"Whether I have wronged you or not, you should know better than me. If you refuse to admit it, then I will tell you your entire modus operandi in detail and see if you can refute it."
"Okay, then I'm all ears."
Zhao Tiezhu's attitude made me, not to mention others, feel that he was wronged. However, I had already made up my mind, so I said, "If I'm not mistaken, the package Qiongqi sent to you was not an empty package, but something. It was because of this thing that your subsequent killing was so easy!"
More than an hour ago, I called Bai Qi to ask two main questions. One of them was to ask Bai Qi to help me retrieve a tracking record of Qiongqi's express delivery. After I learned the contents of the tracking record, I realized that the express delivery Zhao Tiezhu received was not an empty package, but contained something!
After all, I have been a courier for more than a year and have a lot of knowledge about express delivery. The weight of the express is clearly written on the tracking record. Although this weight seems to be only the weight of the box, I know the real weight of a box, so I conclude that there is something in that empty package.
Since Zhao Tiezhu lied to us about this issue, we can point all suspicion to him. Suppose Zhao Tiezhu wants to kill someone because of something, and he bribed Master Liu to be his accomplice. He first drugged me with ether while I was asleep, and then put his father's body on my bed, pretending that I knew nothing. This would first warn the villagers that someone in the village had resurrected. Second, it would also give me a warning so that I would not meddle in other people's business.
Afterwards, Zhao Tiezhu pretended to be a filial son in front of the villagers, constantly accusing those who dug up his father's body without permission. In addition, the villagers usually thought that Zhao Tiezhu was filial, so I naturally ruled Zhao Tiezhu out as the murderer. After all, a filial son would never touch his father's body.
Then it was Zhao Tiezhu's turn to perform. First, Zhao Tiezhu and Liu Zhenren, who was on standby at any time, took out his father's body again and quietly moved it to the home of the first victim, Li Jianmin. They used the same method to knock Li Jianmin's wife unconscious and then killed Li Jianmin. After Li Jianmin's death, Liu Zhenren could also appear on the stage, openly turning the murder case into a case of corpse fraud. The villagers, who were already at the critical point of fear, finally chose to believe Liu Zhenren, and then what happened later happened.
Zhao Tiezhu used the same method to kill Zhang Guozhong and Liu Zhenren later, so I won’t mention it. But I don’t know whether Liu Zhenren chose to keep the bodies of Zhang Guozhong and Li Jianmin at home all night to cover up the fact that he escaped, or whether it was Zhao Tiezhu’s intention.
I briefly told the story, and the villagers all looked at Zhao Tiezhu in confusion. Zhao Tiezhu sneered, "If that's the case, anyone could be the murderer. Since you don't have solid evidence, please stop slandering me, okay?"
"I will give you the evidence later. First, let me tell you the whole story."
It is indeed as Zhao Tiezhu said, anyone can do this as long as they have that kind of drug. From the moment I found Master Liu's body, I suspected Zhao Tiezhu, not because I knew there was something in the empty bag, but because of something Zhao Tiezhu once said to me.
I remember that day we went to ask Zhao Tiezhu what he was doing on the night of Zhang Guozhong's death. Zhao Tiezhu said that he had been with his girlfriend Pan Jinlian. In fact, he could have used drugs to knock his girlfriend out and then do it. His girlfriend would naturally think that he had not been out and would have testified for him. However, on that day, Zhao Tiezhu told me that he had seen Master Liu in the middle of the night.
Regardless of whether Master Liu actually showed up that night, the fact that he saw Master Liu show up is a big problem! I found out at Master Liu's house that it was at the intersection of two roads, one leading to the village, and the other leading to the ancestral graves of Heishan Village. The deceased Zhang Guozhong's house was far away from Zhao Tiezhu's house, but very close to Master Liu's house, less than a hundred meters away. In other words, even if Master Liu came out in the middle of the night, got the body from the ancestral graves, and then went to Zhang Guozhong's house to kill someone, it was impossible for him to risk being seen passing by Zhao Tiezhu's house and being discovered by Zhao Tiezhu!
Moreover, when I spoke about this matter with Master Liu, I never understood the angry look on Master Liu's face. Now that I think about it clearly, I understand that Master Liu's anger turned out to be caused by the betrayal of his teammates!
After I finished speaking, Officer Yang and Lin Yingxue, who had been looking at me with suspicion, gradually began to believe this. However, Zhao Tiezhu still said with disdain, "After all, your inferences are all just guesses. So why don't you tell me why my father died so suddenly? You know, my father died of natural causes. And if it was really me who did it, why would I kill Master Liu?"
Even at this point, Zhao Tiezhu was still being stubborn. I, who had originally felt a little soft-hearted, no longer cared and continued, "Indeed, your father's death has always confused me and is the biggest doubt in this case. However, Lin Yingxue's words just now reminded me that it is not difficult to let your father die a normal death!"
From the beginning, I knew that Zhao Tiezhu's father died of a sudden heart attack, so I casually asked Zhao Tiezhu about his father's condition. Zhao Tiezhu said it was very trivial, so I believed it. But not long ago, Lin Yingxue suddenly said, "You will feel hungry if you don't eat." Then I thought of what Zhao Tiezhu said, and immediately called Bai Qi to ask him to help ask Zhao Tiezhu's father's doctor to see what the condition was.
Sure enough, Bai Qi's answer was that Zhao Tiezhu's father had a very serious heart disease and could only rely on drugs to maintain his condition every day. So I concluded that if Zhao Tiezhu wanted to kill people silently, he only needed to secretly replace the medicine his father had to take every day. In this way, Zhao Tiezhu's father took the wrong medicine and had a heart attack at night. As long as Zhao Tiezhu was cruel enough to ignore it, a normal death would actually be a very simple thing.
As I said this, I took out the medicine bottle that I had just found in Zhao Tiezhu's father's room and handed it to Bai Qi, saying, "I found this thing in Zhao Tiezhu's house when he went out to sell the house this morning. Uncle Bai, take this thing for testing. We'll know if it's real or not once we test it!"
Zhao Tiezhu was already nervous at this time. I continued, "As for why you wanted to kill Master Liu, I initially thought you wanted to silence him, until I remembered another person, and then I felt that this was not the case."
I looked at the village chief who was listening with great interest and said, "Just yesterday, I learned that the village chief was going to leave for a while and had packed his luggage. Last night, Master Liu also said that he was going to leave Black Mountain Village. I didn't connect the two things together at first. I just thought that Master Liu was trying to escape and the village chief was trying to avoid disaster. Later, Master Liu's death made me realize that the reason these two people wanted to leave was probably the same, because they both guessed the murderer's motive for killing!"
"Think about it carefully. Zhao Tiezhu's father, Li Jianmin, Zhang Guozhong, as well as Liu Zhenren and the village chief, all seem to be from the same generation. Why did these people become Zhao Tiezhu's targets? Although I am not very clear, I think this is closely related to Zhao Tiezhu's mother's suicide. Perhaps Liu Zhenren and the village chief noticed this from the deaths of Li Jianmin and Zhang Guozhong, and they ran away because they felt guilty. As for why they felt guilty, you have to ask them themselves. Village chief, am I right?"
After hearing what I said, the village chief's face turned pale and he immediately lowered his head and dared not look at me. Zhao Tiezhu's face was livid and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, but he was still determined to do it. He stared at me and said, "I don't know what medicine my father took. Maybe he made a mistake. As for my mother's affairs, I don't know anything about it. Ji Wen, if you can't produce any evidence, I will sue you for slandering me!"
"I said this bottle of medicine is just my guess. Why are you so nervous? Are you sure you have to have evidence?"
I stared at Zhao Tiezhu coldly. He seemed to feel guilty because of my look. He spoke with all his might: "Yes! I want evidence. All this is just your speculation. You can't produce any evidence at all!"
Seeing the furious Zhao Tiezhu, the villagers subconsciously moved away from him. Only his girlfriend looked at him with tears in her eyes. Perhaps everyone understood at this time that my guess was not wrong.
I pointed to the wound on the back of my neck and said, "The night before Zhang Guozhong died, I was knocked unconscious in the cemetery, and a wound like this was left on my neck. Now, all the exposed skin of the dead bodies has such a wound, which proves that you used something as a weapon to make the victim lose the ability to resist, so as to achieve the purpose of killing. What is it that can make me feel paralyzed? What else can leave such a strange wound, and why are the wounds all on the exposed skin? I have only one guess, that is something similar to an electric baton!"
"Since this wound can appear on Master Liu, it means that the thing is not Master Liu's. Moreover, you attacked me in the cemetery that day, but did not kill me. This shows that your killing target is very clear, and you only kill those who should be killed. Now Master Liu and the village chief are preparing to escape. Can I assume that your next target is the village chief? If your killing target has not been completed, then you will not discard this electric baton. It is either on you now, or hidden in your home or somewhere in Heishan Village. We only need to find this thing, compare it with the wound on my body, and then verify the fingerprints, and we will know whether you are the real murderer!"
When I said the last word, Zhao Tiezhu seemed to collapse and knelt weakly on the ground. However, the villagers around him finally understood that Zhao Tiezhu in front of them was really the murderer of this case. Everyone immediately stayed away from Zhao Tiezhu and accused him of being cruel and ruthless for killing so many people.
Facing everyone's accusations, Zhao Tiezhu suddenly laughed, reached out from his arms and took out something similar to a flashlight with two metal connectors on top and threw it on the ground. Presumably, this should be the electric baton!
The village chief pointed at Zhao Tiezhu angrily and said, "I thought it was really a female ghost seeking revenge. I was so scared that I couldn't sleep well these past few days. It turns out that you were playing tricks! Why did you do this? Why did you want to kill me?"
"Why should I kill you? Don't you understand in your heart? Because you deserve to die!"