Chapter 7

Title: Dog

Translator: System Yaoi

***

Warning: This chapter contains descriptions of mutilation.  

Please note: System kindly requests chu to read all of her translations exclusively on Second Life Translations [https://secondlifetranslations.com/novel/dog/]. Posting her works on any other website is not authorised by System.

Chapter 7

“Captain Li, it has been confirmed that the bloodstains, hair, and organ fragments found in Chen Ping’s bathroom belong to the victim, Zhao Xiaohua. The fingerprints on the knife match Chen Ping’s, and a hair belonging to the suspect was found in the body bag she threw into the river. It was probably an accidental drop. We can basically conclude that Chen Ping is the killer who caused the victim’s death and dismemberment.”

Li Yonghao looked through the forensic report while directing the team to release information and notify the victim’s parents about the follow-up procedures.

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Captain Li was nearly six feet tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp features that exuded a sense of oppression. As he walked into the interrogation room, Chen Ping instinctively shrank back.

Li Yonghao sat down across from her in a forceful manner, locking eyes with her. Chen Ping’s gaze quickly shifted from a vacant expression to fear and avoidance, unnaturally avoiding direct eye contact with him.

Li Yonghao asked, “Do you know Zhao Xiaohua?”

Chen Ping nervously tightened her handcuffed hands and nodded stiffly.

“Well, you should be more familiar with his father, right?” Li Yonghao looked at her expressionlessly. “There are eyewitnesses who claim that you have taken advantage of your position multiple times to enter the victim’s residential area. Is there any truth to this?”

Chen Ping’s voice was barely audible, like a mosquito. “I… I occasionally had to deliver some work-related…”

Li Yonghao interrupted her, “No need for excuses. Just tell me where you were yesterday afternoon.”

As soon as he spoke, Chen Ping trembled all over, and the sound of metal clinking came from her hands. Her eyes seemed vacant, and she struggled to find her words.

“Not willing to say? If you don’t want to, I’ll say it for you. Yesterday afternoon, you sneaked into the vicinity of the victim’s residence, waiting for an opportunity to deceive and abduct Zhao Xiaohua, who was playing nearby. The child must have seen you and regarded you as someone familiar. He didn’t have his guard up against you, which allowed you to silently take him away and later carry out the murder…”

“I didn’t kill anyone.” Chen Ping’s eyes suddenly widened. Her face turned as pale as a wax figure, and the muscles on her face twitched incessantly. She summoned some courage and withdrew her drifting gaze, staring straight at Li Yonghao. “I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t…”

She seemed to have turned into a broken record, repeating those words over and over, unable to say anything else. Li Yonghao, feeling a bit impatient, pulled out a photo from his file bag. It was a picture of the blood-stained bathroom floor in Chen Ping’s apartment. He slammed the table and wordlessly pushed the gory photo in front of her, staring at her with eagle-like eyes. Chen Ping, like a chicken with its neck squeezed, gasped for air and fell silent.

“What is this, then?” Li Yonghao asked. “Huh? What about the bloodstains and organ fragments found in your bathroom? The handle of the knife with your fingerprints, the human pinky bone found in the pressure cooker, and your hair in the body bag filled with dismembered meat in the park’s ditch. Are these pieces of evidence not enough…?”

As Li Yonghao spoke, his voice subtly paused for a moment. In an instant, he realised something… Wait a minute, this so-called evidence seemed to be evidence of dismemberment, but murder? It seemed there was nothing directly proving…

The next moment, Li Yonghao felt like he was being influenced by that eccentric Lu Yi. Even if dismemberment didn’t necessarily mean murder, it couldn’t absolve her from being an accomplice. So he snorted coldly, completing his sentence, “Are these pieces of evidence not enough? Do you have anything else to say?”

Suddenly, Chen Ping burst into a loud and hoarse cry.

Li Yonghao sat firmly across from Chen Ping, waiting for her sudden outburst of emotion to subside before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a half-used packet of tissues, pushing it toward her on the table. Chen Ping hesitated, glanced at him, and then carefully lowered her head to use her limited range of motion to pick up the tissue and wipe her face.

Li Yonghao pondered for a moment and lowered his voice. “Alright then, you said you didn’t kill anyone just now, but you did go near the victim’s residence yesterday, didn’t you?”

Chen Ping nodded and said hoarsely, “I went there.”

Li Yonghao asked, “What time? What did you go there for?”

“Approximately… around 2 o’clock in the afternoon,” Chen Ping bit her lip, “He cancelled our date, and I… I wanted to go to his house to see…”

“Do you often go there?” Li Yonghao asked.

Chen Ping hesitated for a moment and nodded.

Li Yonghao continued, “What do you go there for?”

“Sometimes it’s for work, delivering things to him and such, and sometimes…” She couldn’t continue, so Li Yonghao coldly finished her sentence, “To spy on Zhao Lishu?”

Chen Ping’s eyes reddened, and she quickly lowered her head, using the crumpled tissue to wipe the corners of her eyes.

Li Yonghao crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, looking down at Chen Ping. “When did you leave, then?”

“…In the evening.”

“In the evening?” Li Yonghao’s eyebrows twitched. “Our people were searching in the vicinity at night. Where were you?”

Chen Ping whispered, “I was… in the International Culture Street across the neighbourhood. There’s a bar there, and I was having dinner. From the attic of that bar, I happened to be able to see Zhao Lishu’s front yard. I discovered it unintentionally.”

As soon as he heard that she was a habitual stalker, Li Yonghao rolled his eyes in exasperation. “And then?”

“After finishing dinner, I saw many police cars, and that’s when I learned that something had happened at his house…”

“When did you leave?” Li Yonghao asked.

“I stayed in the bar for a while longer, and I think I left a little after 9 o’clock in the evening.”

“Alone?” Li Yonghao questioned.

Chen Ping closed her eyes and weakly replied, “Yes, I really was alone when I left. Believe me, I didn’t kill anyone. I know, in your eyes, I’m a shameless bad woman. I might be a bit shameless, but I’m not insane. I haven’t even killed a chicken, let alone a person, let alone Zhao Lishu’s child!”

These words burst out of her as if releasing something, and her thinking seemed to regain some clarity. After a pause, Chen Ping suppressed her sobbing and continued speaking softly but quickly, “Moreover, even if I wanted to do something like that, there’s no way Zhao Lishu’s son would go with me. That child’s mother must have told him something. Every time he saw me, he would throw things at me and make faces. He really hates me and never gets within five metres of me. How could I possibly kidnap him?”

From Mrs. Zhao’s reaction, Chen Ping’s words did make sense.

“There’s another possibility,” Li Yonghao said, “Perhaps you took advantage of the victim’s carelessness and suddenly attacked him from behind, rendering him unconscious and taking him away. Considering the victim was only seven or eight years old, it would be feasible for an adult like you.”

Chen Ping sighed and then forced a bitter smile. “Officer, if you insist on thinking that way, I can’t do anything about it.”

She looked resigned, but Li Yonghao’s mind was still working quickly, and his fingers tapped on the table intermittently. Although he had just proposed a possibility, there was a crucial question involved. Maybe Mrs. Zhao truly didn’t see anything, as she was also human and prone to negligence. But how did Chen Ping manage to evade the high-end residential area’s surveillance cameras? How did she know which cameras were malfunctioning and which ones were still operational? Could there be a possibility of an accomplice?

At this moment, Li Yonghao admitted that Lu Yi’s judgement of her was correct. Chen Ping was indeed a relatively passive person, somewhat weak in character and lacking courage. He dared say that a woman like Chen Ping would never directly engage in verbal disputes if she accidentally clashed with someone.

So, if she was indeed the killer who kidnapped and killed Zhao Xiaohua, what compelled her to take such a risk and kidnap a child who was no longer young right under the eyes of the child’s mother, who despised her? Chen Ping was just a young woman, thinner and weaker than girls her age. She was a typical urban white-collar worker who had never engaged in physical labour. She might have had the capability to overpower a young boy, but could she guarantee that her attack would be accurate and completely silent?

Li Yonghao paused and then asked, “What did you do after you returned home?”

“Afterward, I… I went to a 24-hour supermarket. When I opened the trunk of my car with shopping bags in hand, I discovered… someone had placed a large black plastic bag inside without me knowing.”

Li Yonghao responded, “That was the bag you used to dispose of the body.”

Chen Ping lowered her eyelids and took a deep breath as if remembering something extremely terrifying. Even her breath trembled as she spoke, “At that time… I didn’t know what was inside the plastic bag, but when I saw its length and size, I… I had a chilling feeling. Instinctively, I immediately closed the trunk, drove home, and only dared to open the plastic bag in my private garage. Inside… inside was a person! A little boy! At first, I didn’t realise he was Mr. Zhao’s son. I was scared out of my mind, truly scared. For quite some time, my mind was blank, and I didn’t even know the things on the floor had fallen.”

Li Yonghao calmly asked, “You said you didn’t recognize him as Zhao Lishu’s son, was it because the boy was already dead and looked different from when he was alive?”

Chen Ping immediately nodded.

Li Yonghao observed her for a while, sat upright, leaned slightly forward, and rested his elbows on the table. “So, what you’re saying is that you neither kidnapped nor killed Zhao Xiaohua. Instead, someone killed him and then, in order to frame you, surreptitiously placed his body in your car?”

Chen Ping quickly wiped her eyes with the crumpled tissue, nodding again.

“Assuming everything you said before is true, someone found your car through some method, unlocked it, and put a dead child inside,” Li Yonghao stared into her eyes, speaking each word deliberately. “Why did they do that? Okay—let’s set aside why the ‘killer’ would do that for now. Let’s talk about you. How does a normal person react upon seeing a corpse? Tell me, why didn’t you call the police, why didn’t you ask for help, and why, when you recognized the identity of the body, did you not contact the victim’s family but instead brought the child’s body to your home, dismembered it, and disposed of it?”

Chen Ping’s emotions flared up once again. Her words were disjointed, and she stammered for a long time. “B-because… at that time, I thought if I reported it, others would definitely think I was the killer… At that time… I was completely terrified, truly… I didn’t even know what I was thinking. I was outside the residential area, then I saw the police cars, and I knew something had happened. I roughly understood when the child went missing. I had no alibi, and I had… a motive for murder…”

Li Yonghao asked, “What motive for murder do you have?”

Chen Ping slowly lifted her head and said with a pale face, “The reason why Mr. Zhao refused to divorce his wife was because of that child.”

“So, you’ve considered doing something like that, haven’t you? I mean, killing the child,” Li Yonghao stated.

Chen Ping stared at him blankly and suddenly tears welled up in her eyes.

Li Yonghao made a sound of agreement and indicated to his colleague responsible for recording the interrogation to acknowledge. He stood up and walked towards the exit when Chen Ping suddenly called him to a halt.

“Officer, do you think I’m lying?” When she spoke, her voice seemed to be suppressing something, and she was in a highly tense and defensive state. Her head lowered further and further, and Li Yonghao suspected that her chin might be touching his chest. Her voice grew quieter, almost like muttering to herself, but her tone remained steady—as if she had lost all hope and decided to go all out.

“I’m not lying,” Chen Ping murmured, “I also know that without evidence, the police can’t outright accuse me of murder. But if you investigate, you will undoubtedly uncover the relationship between Zhao and me.”

She sniffed forcefully and whispered, “Then I’m finished.”

Li Yonghao asked, “What do you mean by ‘finished’?”

“Everything is finished,” she said with an almost calm attitude. “My life, my career, and my future.”

If it weren’t for Lu Yi accompanying him, Li Yonghao would have thought that either Chen Ping had a problem with her mind or she believed the police had a problem with theirs.

Who the f*ck would react to discovering a corpse with the unimaginable and perverse response of “dismembering” it?

But Lu Yi mentioned that Chen Ping was a person who was perhaps intelligent but tended to avoid things. Suddenly, Li Yonghao felt like he understood a bit—some children were also like this after causing trouble. Their initial reaction wasn’t to find a way to rectify and solve the problem, but rather how to cover up their mistakes from their parents.

If Chen Ping’s words were all true, her behaviour was very similar to that of such children. On the surface, it seemed like she hadn’t caused any trouble because she didn’t kill the person. However, she knew very well that she harboured the desire for Zhao’s son to disappear.

Maintaining an inappropriate relationship with Zhao Lishu for a long time had severely diminished her self-esteem. Her behaviour contradicted traditional moral values, making her subconsciously feel that she had caused trouble. Therefore, she tried to cover up the truth.

While Li Yonghao contemplated this, he took a disposable cup from the water dispenser in the hallway, filled it with water, and pushed open the door to enter the surveillance room. “Longxia, about her…”

His words trailed off because Lu Yi was nowhere to be found. Only a note was left on the table in the surveillance room: “I went to the restroom.”

This guy… Isn’t he messing around? Since when did our country’s laws require a written leave note for going to the restroom?

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