Chapter 244: Chapter 228: Male-Female Relationship (Part 2)

There were several boxes of physical evidence, one of which was filled entirely with interview records.

Ding Junbao quickly contacted someone at the branch office.

Liu Jie felt his spirits lift.

The first step is always the hardest. In a tangled mess like this, once you find a single thread, the rest becomes much easier.

But the hardest part was finding that thread in the first place.

He had asked Shen Xin to come in hopes of taking an unconventional approach, using Shen Xin’s abilities to find that loose end.

He never expected that in just one day, Shen Xin would actually manage to find it.

"Shen Xin, thank you!"

He placed a hand on Shen Xin’s shoulder, trying to suppress his excitement.

Shen Xin quickly replied, "Liu Zhi, I just got lucky. It just so happened I ran into this Zhou Hui yesterday. It seems he’s a businessman and rarely returns to the village."

"Besides, he’s just a suspect for now. It’s not a sure thing yet."

A single record of a rabies vaccination didn’t prove much, and it certainly couldn’t be used as evidence for a conviction.

Zhou Hui could easily come up with an excuse and deny everything.

"No, this discovery is very important."

Liu Jie shook his head, grateful he had made the decision to call Shen Xin.

Otherwise, who knew how long it would have taken to find this lead.

After a while of searching, the branch office found Zhou Hui’s interview record.

Everyone gathered around to look at it.

The body was discovered on the 14th, and this interview was conducted on the 19th.

In his initial statement, Zhou Hui said he had gone to Dongliang Village on the 11th.

His wife, Li Jing, was from Dongliang Village.

Around that time, he and his wife were fighting, and Li Jing had gone back to her parents’ house. He had made several trips trying to persuade her to come back.

He went again on the 11th. While at his in-laws’ house, he had dinner and drinks with his father-in-law and his father-in-law’s friends, not leaving Dongliang Village until after nine in the evening.

He rode an electric scooter and arrived back in his village at around ten-something.

Then he went straight home to bed.

Following that was the statement from Zhou Hui’s mother.

Her account was similar to Zhou Hui’s. She said the couple had been fighting, and that she had opened the door for Zhou Hui sometime after ten that night.

The file also contained verifications of the statements and peripheral investigations.

Officers had gone to Dongliang Village and spoken with Zhou Hui’s wife and father-in-law. They confirmed that they had all had dinner and drinks together that evening, with many people who could attest that Zhou Hui left on his electric scooter after nine.

As for the couple’s fighting, the reason was that Li Jing felt Zhou Hui wasn’t taking his work seriously.

Zhou Hui used to own a shop in town that sold solar panels.

When the two of them got married, Zhou Hui’s family was reasonably well-off.

But not two years into the marriage, his father was diagnosed with cancer, and the treatments drained all their savings.

In the end, they couldn’t save him.

After his father passed away, Zhou Hui lost interest in his business. He also picked up a bad habit of gambling on card games, and business at the shop plummeted.

Because of this, the couple fought frequently.

The neighbors confirmed this as well.

As for what time Zhou Hui actually got home that night, none of the neighbors knew. No one had noticed.

And that was it.

They took a blood sample from Zhou Hui and then ruled him out.

Because after asking his neighbors, no one knew of any conflict between him and Han Xiaolong.

Moreover, Han Xiaolong lived in the northeast part of the village, while Zhou Hui’s home was in the west. The two families lived far apart and, to be honest, didn’t have much interaction.

Judging from the interview records alone, Zhou Hui wasn’t a suspect at all.

It was no wonder Liu Jie didn’t even remember him when his name came up.

But now, things were different.

The men sat down by a flowerbed. Liu Jie said, "Let’s start by assuming Zhou Hui is a suspect. That would mean he lied about his alibi."

"And his mother lied as well."

He said he got back a little after ten, but no one knows the exact time he arrived home, and there’s no way to prove it.

His mother’s testimony isn’t necessarily reliable.

This situation is just like Wang Chenghui’s. His alibi isn’t solid enough, but at the same time, you have no evidence to disprove it.

But if you work backward from the assumption that Zhou Hui is the suspect, then there’s no doubt that both mother and son lied.

"He and this Han Xiaolong must have some kind of connection we don’t know about. From now on, that’s what we need to focus on investigating."

In other words, the motive.

Their homes were far apart, and they didn’t interact much. For no apparent reason, why would Zhou Hui kill Han Xiaolong?

Ding Junbao nodded. He was thinking the same thing.

A lot of time has passed. They didn’t find the murder weapon back then, and it would be even harder to find it now.

All they could do was investigate the motive.

"Xiaoshen, what are your thoughts?" Liu Jie looked up at Shen Xin.

Shen Xin didn’t hold back. "Liu Zhi, now that Zhou Hui is a suspect, we definitely have to investigate his motive."

"At the same time, I’d like to stick to my original plan. I’ll take Han Xiaolong’s dog and keep wandering around the village, trying to screen everyone who was here back then and see if any other similar situations pop up."

The old dog had shown hostility toward Zhou Hui.

But its favorability rating wasn’t high enough for him to hear its thoughts, so Shen Xin couldn’t be sure about the source of that hostility.

’What if Zhou Hui just didn’t like the old dog and had kicked it before? It was impossible to say for sure.’

That’s why he couldn’t put all his eggs in the Zhou Hui basket; he had to find a way to continue screening others.

Only if he screened everyone and Zhou Hui was the only one who got a reaction could they truly lock him in as the suspect.

Liu Jie nodded in agreement.

A two-pronged approach.

"Alright, Xiaoshen, you head back to the village in a bit. I’ll take charge of the investigation into Zhou Hui here."

This had once been his case, and now that there was a new lead, Liu Jie was determined to oversee it personally.

And so, the two groups split up and went their separate ways.

Shen Xin didn’t rush back to Wuba Village. He first went to the local police station and asked for a stack of flyers about telecom fraud.

Telecom fraud cases had been rampant in the last couple of years, so every local police station was tasked with public awareness campaigns.

Shen Xin planned to use the fraud prevention campaign as a pretext to go door-to-door, bringing the old dog along to identify people.