Chapter 108: The Body Farm

Chen Shi asked, “What’s your relationship with Kong Tingting?”

“College classmates, friends.”

“Is that all?”

“Is this what Xiao Wang told you? Yes, I did pursue her, but she never accepted me. In fact, we haven’t been in contact for a long time. Hearing about her death was quite sudden.”

Chen Shi observed Han Le closely, noting his shifty gaze, indicating he might be hiding something.

Chen Shi decided to drop a bombshell, “Did you know that before she died, Kong Tingting thought she had AIDS and was recklessly sleeping with strangers?”

“What!?” Han Le was shocked. “No way, she wasn’t that kind of girl.”

“That’s not for you to decide. It’s a fact.”

Han Le was speechless for a while before saying, “Alright, I know people can change. Maybe she wasn’t the same innocent girl who used to recite vocabulary under the willow trees in the morning.”

“Do you know if she had any enemies?”

“How could I know? I told you, we haven’t been in touch. I wasn’t hanging on to one tree forever. I actually have a girlfriend now. See, that’s her over there.” He pointed to a short-haired girl with freckles at the checkout counter.

Chen Shi took out his phone to exchange contact information. “If you think of anything, contact us immediately.”

“Of course!”

“Alright, we won’t disturb you further.”

Lin Dongxue kept signaling to Chen Shi with her eyes, but he ignored her. After leaving the supermarket, Lin Dongxue asked, “Why didn’t you ask about his alibi?”

“Too many questions can be suspicious. Don’t be so direct.”

“Do you think he was telling the truth?”

“I think he’s hiding something… Miss Lin, have you ever had a backup boyfriend?”

Lin Dongxue’s eyes widened. “Why do you ask? Girls like feeling adored, but I’ve never done that.”

Xu Xiaodong said, “I’ve been a backup.”

“How did it feel?”

“In middle school, I liked a girl. We went out a few times, but she never wanted to be seen with me in front of classmates. Later, I found out she had a boyfriend. It broke my heart.”

“Did you ever want to kill her?” Lin Dongxue asked curiously.

“No, just felt sad… though I did kind of hate her.”

“The feelings of a backup are complex. We should keep an eye on Han Le,” Chen Shi said.

Chen Shi didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he snuck into the employee locker room. An older woman walked in and asked, “What are you doing here?”

Chen Shi signaled to Lin Dongxue, who showed her badge. “We’re police officers, investigating a…”

“A theft case! One of your employees lost something important and reported it yesterday.”

The woman, not noticing that Lin Dongxue’s badge read “criminal police,” believed them. “Why not talk to the manager?”

“It’s a private matter. The victim didn’t want to make it public. Could you please…” Chen Shi pointed to the lockers.

“Sure, cooperating with the police is my duty.”

The woman got the keys and opened several lockers as Chen Shi pretended to look for something. Finally, he asked her to open Han Le’s locker. Inside were his clothes, and Chen Shi quickly grabbed a hair when the woman wasn’t looking.

Underneath the clothes was a detective novel titled “Eyes of the Night” by Xin Bai. Chen Shi murmured, “The same author as last time?”

“Officer, did you find it?”

“No, let’s check the other lockers.” They went through all the lockers before Chen Shi thanked the woman and left.

The three of them discussed their next steps. In the group chat, Peng Sijue mentioned some progress, and Lin Qiupu said a friend of the deceased had information and was nearby. They were asked to follow up.

Chen Shi suggested, “Let’s split up. I’ll go back to Peng Sijue, and you two follow up on the lead.”

Lin Dongxue teased, “Peng always comes first.”

Back at the station, Chen Shi went straight to the forensic team, which was freezing cold. Officers were stomping their feet and blowing into their hands to keep warm. Peng Sijue, however, was focused on his microscope, unfazed.

“What’s going on? Has the forensic team turned into an ancient tomb sect?” Chen Shi joked.

An officer explained, “The captain is doing an experiment on food spoilage in the fridge.”

Indeed, there was an old fridge in the room. Chen Shi laughed, “Dedicated as always!”

Peng Sijue, without looking up, said, “The current temperature is 41°F. For the ice cream to melt like that, it would take some time… I also checked data from the University of Tennessee. At 86°F, decomposition accelerates by five hours.”

“The body farm?”

“Yes.”

Three universities in the US jointly built a body farm with various types of corpses to study decomposition under different conditions, aiding criminal investigations.

Peng Sijue continued, “If the power outage happened that night, it would cause a five-hour error in estimating the time of death. How do we determine if the outage was that night?”

“On my way back, I had a theory. The killer murdered her at 3 PM, then cut the power. He returned the next morning to restore it. From a forensic perspective, the air conditioner was running, so they would estimate the time of death as 7 PM, but it was actually at room temperature all along… This is reverse thinking. If the killer planned this, he must be very smart.”

“Trying to mislead the forensics? That’s clever. Why would he do that?”

“To establish an alibi. When the police find him, he can calmly say he has an alibi for 7 PM.”

Peng Sijue pondered, “There’s another possibility. The power outage happened earlier, and the food spoiled before the murder, which did occur at 7 PM. Don’t forget, the guy received a call from the victim at 7 PM.”

“Just a theory. Bold assumptions, careful verification.”

“I think you’re overcomplicating the killer’s plan.”

“No, when someone is desperate to avoid conviction, they can show extraordinary cleverness.”

“Let’s go back to the scene to check.”

Chen Shi agreed. “Wait, I have something for you.” He handed Peng Sijue the hair sample from Han Le. “Compare this with the hair found on the victim.”

Peng Sijue handed the sample to an officer. “Captain, we’ve got a match on the skin sample DNA.”

Chen Shi was puzzled. “What’s going on?”

Peng Sijue explained, “Seems we don’t need to go back. The suspect has been identified.”