For everyone in the villa, this was destined to be a sleepless night.
After finishing the questioning of the four key suspects, Ji Xun did not remain idle. He strolled out of Chen Jiashu’s room and began wandering and chatting throughout the entire villa.
Since no formal case had been opened, the police could not conduct direct searches of the rooms. However, no one could stop him from walking around and asking questions.
There were quite a few people in the villa. In a house this large, one group was responsible for cleaning, another for food and beverage, and others for maintenance and garden upkeep.
The villa had three floors. The third floor consisted mostly of bedrooms: Chen Jiashu’s bedroom, Mrs. Sun’s bedroom next door, the bodyguard A-Bin’s bedroom, and the pharmacy at the end of the corridor—where all the villa’s standby and medical supplies were kept, which the police had already searched. Past the pharmacy, at the very end of the hall, was a door leading to a terrace that wrapped around the entire third floor.
A large wisteria tree was planted on the terrace; lush green leaves climbed all over the exterior wall, and flower buds were already beginning to form.
The life of the flowers was about to bloom, yet the life of the man had already withered.
After circling the perimeter for about an hour, Ji Xun, having finished chatting with various people, returned to the room.
It was Chen Jiashu’s room. They sat on the soft sofa in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, with the large bed where Chen Jiashu had died right behind them.
“What did you find out?” Huo Ranyin asked.
“Some trivial details,” Ji Xun said. “For instance, Mrs. Sun has a severe pollen allergy—severe enough that coming into contact with pollen requires an IV drip at the hospital…”
“She has a severe pollen allergy but came up to the mountain at this time?” Huo Ranyin asked, sensitive to the inconsistency.
It was the turn of March and April—spring, the days when flowers competed to bloom. Coming up the mountain at this time was nothing short of a severe challenge for a pollen allergy sufferer.
“Well, in a few days, it will be Mrs. Sun’s seventieth birthday,” Ji Xun said. “For such a big birthday, the mother wanted to be with her son, so she specifically came up the mountain. Because of this, she carried a medical kit with her everywhere.”
The reason held up.
“What a coincidence,” Huo Ranyin said quietly.
“A birthday is written on one’s ID card and cannot be changed, so this is likely a genuine coincidence,” Ji Xun replied.
Sitting in the bright room at night, looking out at the dim surroundings, one could only see the reflection of the interior on the window glass and vague, pitch-black outlines.
Whether it was the wind or something else, a silhouette flickered on his retina and suddenly vanished.
Ji Xun gazed thoughtfully at the disappeared shadow.
That shadow seemed real yet ethereal, both near and far; it looked as if it were lurking on the terrace outside the window, yet also as if it were hiding in the treetops of the garden.
He asked Huo Ranyin: “The mountain is so large, and there are only people here—do you think there could be a ghost wandering around the mountain?”
“…” Huo Ranyin looked puzzled. “Are you joking?”
“These aren’t my words,” Ji Xun corrected. “This is what Old Zhang—the night watchman of the villa—said.”
“And how did you respond?”
“Me?” Ji Xun said. “I told him: ‘Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony; freedom, equality, justice, rule of law.'”
“Very good,” Huo Ranyin evaluated.
“Let’s wait for the autopsy results,” Ji Xun yawned. “Only when we have the results and know exactly how Chen Jiashu died can we target our search for evidence. I hope the medical examiner’s office pulls through…”
The forensic team at the Ning City Criminal Investigation Division was indeed efficient. By 8:00 AM the next morning, the autopsy results arrived: Chen Jiashu had died of respiratory tract swelling and asphyxiation caused by an acute allergic reaction.
In other words, Chen Jiashu did not die from kidney disease, but from an allergic reaction.
“Have you identified the allergen?” Huo Ranyin asked Hu Yuan.
“Cefoperazone (a type of cephalosporin),” Hu Yuan replied. “The deceased’s medical records also noted that he was allergic to cephalosporins.”
With the results out, the situation became clear.
“Chen Jiashu had a kidney transplant and had to take immunosuppressants every day. All the killer needed to do was mix the cephalosporin into the medicine Chen Jiashu was taking…” Ji Xun hypothesized. “However, after consuming the drug and experiencing a severe allergic reaction, Chen Jiashu would inevitably have struggled. Yet, the scene showed absolutely no signs of a struggle. We can infer that Chen Jiashu also had a habit of taking sleeping pills every day, right?”
“Yes,” Huo Ranyin said. He didn’t need Hu Yuan to tell him; Chen Jiashu’s own medication report recorded it.
Chen Jiashu had always used sleeping pills to rest, and recently, due to the transplant, the dosage had been increased. Considering this, it was highly likely that Chen Jiashu had suffocated from the allergic reaction while in his sleep—which explained why the police found no traces of struggle on or around the body.
Based on the autopsy, this was clearly a case of murder.
The police opened a formal case, and search warrants were signed and issued.
When Huo Ranyin presented the warrant to Mrs. Sun, the elderly woman pursed her lips, revealing two deep, chiseled nasolabial folds beneath her nose. Her elegant temperament settled and hardened into a quality as solid as rock.
“Please,” Mrs. Sun said coldly.
The first place that had to be searched was, of course, Chen Jiashu’s pharmacy.
The pharmacy in the corner of the third-floor corridor was not a large room. Against the wall stood a desk used for preparing medication; in the center of the room were several open bookshelves filled with various bottles and jars of medicine.
There was a window in the room, but it was covered by curtains.
Usually, Xiaofei was responsible for Chen Jiashu’s medicine. She led the police to the shelf specifically holding the medication Chen Jiashu took daily, standing nervously to the side.
Ji Xun scanned the medicine bottles—prednisone, tacrolimus, sodium bicarbonate, and so on. He picked them up one by one, weighing them and inspecting them.
At the same time, Huo Ranyin surveyed the entire room, from the four walls to the shelves, the floor, and the ceiling.
When he looked at a corner of the ceiling, Huo Ranyin’s eyes stopped. He asked: “What’s going on up there?”
Near the corner where the wall met the door, 5 cm below the white ceiling, there was a dark, jagged hole with wires hanging from it. There were also nail marks on the wall beside it.
Xiaofei looked up and whispered: “I don’t know.”
The other three had joined them as well. Zheng Xuewang said: “I didn’t pay attention to these things.”
Mrs. Sun said coldly: “How my son chooses to handle his own house is his own business.”
Li Feng had nothing to say and could only avoid Huo Ranyin’s gaze.
These people were projecting an attitude of non-violent non-cooperation—but it was of no use.
Ji Xun bent down, moved the chair from under the desk to the wall, stepped on it, and took a look.
“Hmm… the wall is stark white, with hardly any dust on it. It must have been taken down within the last two days. Judging by the location, it was likely a surveillance camera.”
He stepped back down to the ground, returned to his previous spot, and handed a bottle of the medicine Chen Jiashu took daily to Huo Ranyin. “It’s too light.”
Huo Ranyin took it, feeling the bottle was feather-light, almost empty. When he opened it, he found it was indeed almost empty, with only two or three pills remaining.
He looked at the medicine in his hand, then at the spot where the camera had been removed, and finally understood the perpetrator’s method in the Chen Jiashu case.
…
“The method was very simple,” Ji Xun said, gently rubbing his temples as he walked out of the pharmacy. “All the killer had to do was mix the cephalosporin into that bottle of medicine that was almost finished. Although there is no way to know exactly which day Chen Jiashu died, whether it was today, tomorrow, or the day after, he was destined to die—it just depended on which day that specific pill was taken.”
“This also…” Ji Xun wanted to say something else, but he paused halfway, seemingly hesitant or deep in thought.
“This also provided the killer with an alibi and a window of time to escape,” Huo Ranyin completed the thought for him. He was currently arranging police operations for the villa. The camera dismantled from the pharmacy wall was of vital importance and had to be found. He ordered a comprehensive search of the villa’s interior first; if it wasn’t found, they would expand to the garden outside and the mountain roads leading to the villa.
“Hmm,” Ji Xun murmured vaguely. This line of reasoning looked like… no, that was impossible, absolutely impossible. Or was the killer setting a false trail? Was there something he had missed?
He continued:
“The method of the crime is clear, and identifying the suspect isn’t that difficult. Chen Jiashu saved us a lot of time—he installed surveillance cameras in the pharmacy, recording the image of everyone who entered. The problem is… why would this group of people hide the cameras?”
The cameras were evidence, containing crucial footage.
They would only take precautions to destroy the evidence if they clearly knew Chen Jiashu had been murdered and that the police would likely intervene… On the surface, it looked as if everyone were the killer, as if everyone were conspiring together.
That was impossible.
What reason would they have to collude to kill Chen Jiashu?
Ji Xun rubbed his temples even harder.
“Based on the investigation, there was no irreconcilable conflict between Chen Jiashu and his mother,” Huo Ranyin’s voice rang out, analyzing logically. “With the possibility of the mother being the killer and destroying evidence ruled out, only two directions remain: 1. The mother is shielding the killer; 2. The mother intends to kill the killer herself through vigilante justice.”
Just as the analysis finished, hurried footsteps came from outside. The police officers who had been dispatched to search the villa returned with news for Huo Ranyin:
“Captain Huo, we discovered a small, human-sized door in the garden. There was a surveillance device next to it, but the camera has been removed. Judging by the marks, it was also removed quite recently!”
It was even stranger now.
The normal front and back doors were left open for the police, yet someone had deliberately dismantled the camera at the small door, which must have captured something that couldn’t be shown to the police… something that couldn’t be shown to the police…
Mrs. Sun… Old Zhang… the cameras…
Ji Xun’s fingers, which had been rubbing his temples, stopped. A series of clues connected, forming a logical chain that looped from start to finish. This clear chain of logic made him feel energized:
“I know!”
