A Bad-Hearted Doctor is Unbearably Beautiful - Chapter 16

Yunting Garden residents were wealthy and influential, including many famous figures and powerful individuals.

The building only had one apartment per floor. Zhang Dalong lived on the third floor of Building C. When they arrived, there were no scratches or signs of a struggle on the door’s lock.

After knocking on the door twice with no response, the property management took out their tools to remove the electronic lock.

“Wait.” Lu Xiao collected a few fingerprints from the door and lock before telling them to proceed.

“Are there any security cameras in this building?” Lu Xiao asked, looking around.

“Our complex values resident privacy, and with one apartment per floor, any cameras would be installed by the owners themselves. We don’t install them in the buildings.”

After the electronic lock was removed, the property management staff was about to enter when Lu Xiao stopped them.

“This could be a crime scene, so it’s best if you don’t go in.”

Lu Xiao blocked the property staff at the door, then pulled a crumpled pair of shoe covers from his pocket and handed them to Shen Zhao.

After Shen Zhao put them on, he looked up, and Lu Xiao had already prepared a pair of gloves for him.

“Thank you.”

“I came prepared, right?” Lu Xiao said, waiting for praise. Shen Zhao simply walked past him and entered the apartment.

“What’s wrong with giving me a little praise? Tsk, so stingy.”

Zhang Dalong’s apartment exuded an air of luxury. The floor-to-ceiling windows directly faced the most bustling landmark buildings in the city center. The room was also decorated with numerous ornaments and paintings.

The furniture was predominantly Chinese in style, with carved tea tables and a liquor cabinet that looked like a modern antique, all clearly of high value.

However, the room now looked as if it had been ransacked.

The cabinet and liquor cabinet doors were wide open, as if someone had hurriedly searched through them. Shen Zhao went to the bedroom and the kitchen to take a look.

Shen Zhao’s expression turned grim. “There might be valuables missing from the bedroom. The wardrobe and nightstands were all a mess, and even under the bed had been searched.”

“The kitchen utensils, however, were neatly arranged. It doesn’t look like they were touched. The knife set is all accounted for.”

Lu Xiao was also searching for anything unusual. On the glass cabinet in the entryway, there seemed to be a greasy fingerprint. Lu Xiao took another fingerprint sample, then knelt on the floor to see if there were any footprints.

The floor was reflective, and he couldn’t see any obvious footprints.

Lu Xiao felt a headache coming on. Just then, he noticed a white object wedged in a gap beneath the TV cabinet.

Lu Xiao pressed his face to the floor, stretched his hand as far as he could, and finally retrieved the item.

It was a broken piece of porcelain.

Shen Zhao walked over and carefully took the shard to examine it.

“Careful with your hands…”

After saying this, Lu Xiao felt he had said too much and pressed his lips together.

The shard was curved. One side was glazed, and the other was matte, suggesting it came from a decorative vase or a similar object.

“There’s a circular mark on this cabinet!” Lu Xiao pointed to a bookshelf by the entryway. There was indeed a circular outline left by a layer of dust.

The vase might have just been broken.

After collecting the porcelain shard, they notified the forensics team to conduct a more thorough sweep of the scene and prepared to head to Liu Tingting’s apartment.

They drove to an old residential building that was decades old. The building’s exterior was mottled, with peeling paint from years of wind and rain. The entire complex had a weathered look.

The entrance door was an old-fashioned green iron gate. The staircase was cluttered with residents’ belongings, and bundles of wires were strung along the walls above their heads, likely self-installed by residents.

The landlord said that Liu Tingting had only been renting the apartment for less than six months. When he heard about her death, the landlord’s face turned ashen.

“Oh… what am I going to do? My apartment is going to become a murder house!” the landlord said, flustered.

The daily flow of residents in the old neighborhood was too high, so their interviews didn’t yield any useful information.

Liu Tingting’s apartment was small, less than forty square meters, but there were several shoe and clothes racks inside. It was clear that all the clothes and shoes belonged to one person. In addition, there was a bouquet of nearly 100 roses in the room. Most of the flowers had just bloomed, and only a few showed signs of wilting.

Lu Xiao and Shen Zhao looked around for a long time but didn’t find any other specific clues.

Before they had even gone down the stairs, Lu Xiao’s phone suddenly rang.

“Captain Lu, we found a crucial lead!” Wu Di said on the other end of the line.

“Tell me!”

“A cleaning lady at Ren’ai Medical Center said she’s seen the scar-faced man. She said he seems to be an old friend of Ren’ai’s owner, Zhang Dalong.”

“What?” Lu Xiao never imagined the scar-faced man would have such a connection.

“Where is the cleaning lady? I’m on my way!” Lu Xiao said, gesturing for Shen Zhao to come downstairs immediately. The two of them quickly got into the car.

Dark clouds hung overhead, and the sky grew darker as the traffic moved. A few scattered clouds glowed with a faint warm light in the last rays of sunlight. Shen Zhao felt his eyelids grow heavy, and his head gradually tilted to rest on the passenger window.

Lu Xiao fought to stay alert and kept driving. As he waited at a traffic light, he glanced at the sleeping Shen Zhao and suddenly thought it would be nice to just keep driving forever.

He himself was too lazy to go home and deal with his relatives, which was why he was staying at the station for Lunar New Year. But why was Shen Zhao doing the same?

Other on-call doctors and nurses would take shifts, but Shen Zhao had no intention of resting.

Before the Lantern Festival, maybe he could find a chance to treat Shen Zhao to some dumplings. Should he pair dumplings with red wine or whiskey? Lu Xiao pondered his father’s wine collection, which was worth over ten million, and his eyes stared blankly at Shen Zhao’s face.

‘Beep!’ ‘Beep-beep!’

Lu Xiao finally realized the light had turned green and gently pressed the gas pedal.

Shen Zhao was woken up by the chorus of horns. He frowned, opened his eyes, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing~~ Go back to sleep. The cars behind us are honking like crazy. Don’t they know they’re not supposed to honk indiscriminately? I really don’t know how these people got their driver’s licenses. I’ll have the traffic police boys look into them sometime!”

Shen Zhao used his ring finger to gently rub his right temple. “I’m not going back to sleep. You told me before that Old Third Song said he didn’t know the scar-faced man, right?”

“Yeah, but the scar-faced man clearly knows Old Third Song. Not only that, but he also knows Zhang Dalong. The relationship between these three is a damn mess.”

“It’s also strange that Old Third Song suddenly showed up at Zhang Dalong’s apartment complex. Was it really just for money?”

“Exactly! I knew that little scoundrel was hiding something from us!” Lu Xiao said, clenching his right hand into a fist.

“Officer Lu,” Shen Zhao said, suddenly calling Lu Xiao by his official title.

Lu Xiao had a moment of panic, as if a close friend had suddenly called him by his full name.

“What is it?” Lu Xiao took a sharp breath.

“I support you going back and kicking him a few times before interrogating him again,” Shen Zhao said.

Lu Xiao burst out laughing in the car, and the tight grip he had on the steering wheel loosened again.