Silent Testimony - Chapter 26

“People can lie, but material evidence will not.”

A suffocating silence filled the narrow space. Qiu Wan sat upright in the chief interrogator’s seat, her mind replaying the last sentence Bureau Chief Liu left before exiting the surveillance room.

Sun Hao, directly opposite her, likely guessed that Sun Luying had intervened with the police. His mortal fear was instantly swept away. He straightened his back and began to loudly demand, “Hey, when are you going to let me out?”

Xiao Lu roared at him, “No way! You better—”

Qiu Wan gazed at Sun Hao’s arrogant face, interrupting Xiao Lu. “It’s fine. He can only rely on Sun Luying to be briefly arrogant.” She was calm and collected, seemingly not taking his insolence seriously. Her pace of speech was slow, but her words were sharp. “But I am telling you, even if Rongke’s Chairman rushes here tonight to plead for you, you will not be leaving the police station gates.” She attempted to use the interrogation to achieve the goal of rendering the high school classmate’s testimony null and void, asking in a deep voice, “When did you arrange to meet your high school classmate?”

Sun Hao’s heart was pounding. He wondered how this police officer could be so unyielding. He lifted his head, took a deep breath, pursed his dry lips, and, adjusting his demeanor, shot back, “No comment.”

Xiao Lu was about to explode with rage. Qiu Wan remained noncommittal. Instead, she reconstructed the process of their meeting based on all the evidence. “On the afternoon of July 18th, you and Chen Kang met at a private coffee shop near Rongke’s headquarters. You knew he loved money, so you offered him 50,000 in cash to help you dispose of the vehicle involved, with a remaining 50,000 to follow if the case didn’t come to light later. Is that right?”

It was as if she had struck a vital point. Sun Hao was speechless. He had to stall for time with the police. As long as he got out of the police station, he was sure he could find a way to make Chen Kang change his testimony.

“You were quite cautious in your actions, giving him 50,000 in cash…”

Before she finished speaking, rapid footsteps approached from outside, followed by the door being pushed open. Qiu Wan turned. Tao Ling walked quickly across the room, handing her the test results. “Team Leader Qiu, everything is within our expectations.”

Qiu Wan flipped through two pages, and the haze that had clouded her eyes instantly cleared.

“Thank you. You’ve worked hard.”

“It’s no trouble. Sister Wei said we can leave work first and leave the rest to you.” Tao Ling turned and left.

It was now past midnight. Qiu Wan wasted no time, throwing the report at Sun Hao. “You probably can’t understand it, so I’ll explain simply: your diamond is contaminated with the victim’s blood.”

“How could that be? I clearly already…” He blurted out the words, immediately stopping when he realized his mistake.

“Already what? Already wiped it clean with paper? You can wipe the watch face clean, but what about the diamond’s crevice?”

Sun Hao’s mental state collapsed in an instant. Due to nervousness, his face visibly contorted, and his lips seemed sealed, unable to utter a single word.

Qiu Wan leaned back against her chair. “Confess now. Don’t waste each other’s time. Start with the motive for the murder.”

Sun Hao remembered his lawyer’s final instruction: if the evidence was ironclad, he could only confess everything in detail to seek a reduced sentence. “My mom bought insurance, and she actually wanted to list him as the beneficiary. Why!?”

It was indeed the damage to his interests that fueled his murderous intent.

Qiu Wan guided Sun Hao to reconstruct the entire process of the crime. “That’s the motive. When did you start planning to kill him?”

Sun Hao’s teeth chattered uncontrollably. “In April this year.”

Qiu Wan interjected, asking, “April. Zhou Lin also deleted her chat records in April. Is there a connection between the two events?”

The mention of Zhou Lin was like a lifeline to Sun Hao. He said excitedly, “If I confess the accomplice, can I seek a reduced sentence?”

Xiao Lu’s typing hands paused. He replied unequivocally, “Of course you can! Speak quickly!”

“It was Sister Lin who suggested killing Yang Guang. I initially disagreed. Murder, after all, requires a life for a life.”

Qiu Wan’s expression immediately darkened. “Are you suggesting she is the principal offender?”

“Sister Lin wanted to completely break free from Yang Guang. She repeatedly hinted that Yang Guang had wronged her. I advised Sister Lin to break up, but she wanted him dead.”

“This was around April 10th. I didn’t agree. Later, because of the insurance, I felt Yang Guang had to be removed.”

Qiu Wan emphasized, “Do you have evidence? Otherwise, I will think you are trying to deliberately implicate Zhou Lin to get a reduced sentence.”

Sun Hao jumped up in a frenzy. “What evidence? I am the best witness! As for how we planned it, we only discussed it face-to-face. Where would there be any evidence?”

“You must have used a second mobile phone or WeChat to communicate, right?”

Sun Hao suddenly realized, sensing he was being scapegoated. “After I successfully dumped Yang Guang into the river, she told me to delete WeChat, pull out the SIM card, and for safety, even throw away the mobile phone. What evidence could possibly be left?”

“Our police work requires a complete chain of evidence, including witness testimony, material evidence, documentary evidence, appraisal conclusions, and inspection records. Your one-sided statements alone will not be adopted.”

“You should interrogate her the way you are interrogating me!” Sun Hao could no longer sit still. His fists clenched so hard they cracked, and his voice was hoarse. “I’ve confessed everything clearly, and I’ve provided the principal offender. What more do you want from me?”

“I have already called for Zhou Lin to be summoned. But you said you confessed clearly? What happened on the day of the crime?” Qiu Wan articulated clearly. “Did you tell me?”

Sun Hao shuddered, recalling, “Yang Guang had a habit of swimming every night before bed, so we originally planned to feed him sleeping pills and push him into the pool while he was disoriented. But I don’t know what kind of physique Yang Guang had; the sleeping pills didn’t work on him. He was still as strong as an ox.”

Qiu Wan deduced, “The victim struggled in the water. You weren’t as strong as him, so you grabbed a hammer and hit him?”

“Yes. We were fixing the fence in the garden, and the iron hammer was right next to the pool.”

Qiu Wan methodically narrated the sequence of events. “Then you confirmed his death, cleaned up the scene in the middle of the night. Since you couldn’t pump the water out, you submerged yourself to pull the plug. It takes two and a half hours for the pool water to completely drain, which explains the abnormal water consumption between 2 and 3 a.m.”

Sun Hao admired the police’s logic. “You know everything. What else do you want me to say?” His bones felt weak. He couldn’t force himself to sit up straight and just slumped in his seat.

Xiao Lu rolled his eyes at him. “This is the interrogation procedure. I’m recording.”

Sun Hao suddenly thought of something and shouted, “You can check if she bought sleeping pills! That will prove I’m not lying.”

“How many sleeping pills?”

“Twenty pills. I gave Yang Guang twenty pills, and he was completely unaffected.”

Qiu Wan looked down at her messages, seeing that Zhou Lin had been taken to the room next door. She typed an instruction: [Xiao Zhou, come take over for me.] She hit send, then stood up and walked out of the interrogation room, pushing open the door to the adjacent room. The woman opposite her still looked composed, but the very first sentence she spoke was enigmatic.

“Officer, Sun Hao confessed that I was the mastermind, right?”

“You guessed it.” Qiu Wan sat down, sounding as if she were engaging in casual conversation. “One of my colleagues especially admires you. She’d like to hear your story.”

“The officer who interrogated me this evening?” Zhou Lin smiled with relief. “Actually, I had already achieved my goal of using someone else to kill him and dragging Sun Hao down with me. I should have confessed then, but I really wanted to know if he would keep his initial promise.”

“What promise?”

“That if either of us was caught by the police, we would never reveal the other’s involvement in the murder.”

Qiu Wan shook her head. “You are too naive.”

“It’s not naivety. If I were naive, I wouldn’t have replaced most of the sleeping pills with vitamins. Out of twenty pills, only three were actual sleeping pills. Also, when I went to Sun Hao’s villa on July 23rd to clean up the mess, I deliberately left evidence for you to solve the case. I put Yang Guang’s horn comb, which he used for his hair, in a noticeable location. Unfortunately, the police didn’t get a chance to enter the bathroom.”

“The evidence you left all pointed to Sun Hao. Why are you confessing now?” Since she had managed things so flawlessly, she could have completely gotten away. Qiu Wan examined Zhou Lin’s thoughts from a criminal psychology perspective.

“First, I am confident that you, the police, can find evidence to convict me. Second, I don’t have long to live anyway, so it’s meaningless.”

Qiu Wan frowned instantly. “You don’t have long to live?”

“In December last year, my period was delayed. The pregnancy test showed two lines. I was preparing to tell Yang Guang the good news when I accidentally found out about his affair.”

Qiu Wan offered her view. “Knowing he cheated, you could have broken up with him and aborted the child.”

“I thought that too at first, but I felt wronged. We met in university, confirmed our relationship after graduation, nearly ten years of my youth—how could I easily let that go? So I agonized over how to deal with this throughout December, which led to a miscarriage later. I had to go to the hospital alone for treatment and stay there. Yet he lied, saying he was leading a tour group in Shuxi, when his location was actually in Puchen all along, ignoring me completely.”

Zhou Lin tilted her head back, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. “Officer, can you understand how I felt at the time?”

Qiu Wan sighed, remaining silent, acting as a qualified listener.

“Worse than death.” Zhou Lin wiped her tears, saying in a deep voice, “But I wanted Yang Guang to pay the price even more.”

“Do you know why I was determined to kill him? Because during a check-up after I was discharged from the hospital on January 3rd this year, I was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, low-grade differentiation. Although I didn’t have any clinical symptoms, the doctor said the malignancy was high, and the prognosis for survival was not optimistic.”

“I’m going to die anyway, so why not take him with me?” Zhou Lin raised her red eyes, looking directly at Qiu Wan, speaking frankly, “As for Sun Hao, he was just my tool to get revenge on Sun Luying. People are inherently selfish. He would only strike back when his interests were threatened by someone else.”

“So, Sun Hao is not innocent. He even proactively asked me how to make Yang Guang disappear without anyone knowing.” Zhou Lin signaled Xiao Liao to give Qiu Wan the USB drive she had submitted before entering the interrogation room. “All my chat records with him are on there.”

Qiu Wan’s expression grew serious. She reached out and accepted the USB drive.

“Officer, is there anything else you want to know?”

Qiu Wan reviewed all the details of the case. “On August 3rd, the water consumption at Sun Hao’s villa in Wanfeng City exceeded 500 tons. Are you aware of the reason?”