Diary of a Criminal Investigator

The annex room in Song Tiejun’s house was full of old bloodstains. During the investigation, Lu Chuan discovered that some stains were very old, some as long as three to five years, or even longer.

It’s confirmed that this annex room is the crime scene where Song Tiejun dismembered and disposed of bodies.

Lu Chuan opened the iron stove that Song Tiejun mentioned, which was actually a coal stove used by Song Tiejun for blacksmithing.

The stove looked very old, a relic of times past. Sun Jianguo knew it was something left by Song Tiejun’s grandfather, with nearly a century of history.

There were no burning coals inside the stove, but it contained a considerable amount of ashes.

Lu Chuan used a poker to stir the ashes and realized that Song Tiejun was not lying; there were indeed bone ashes inside the stove.

Human bones primarily consist of organic matter, minerals, and water.

Among them, organic matter includes proteins, enzymes, chondroitin, and so on, which are crucial for bone growth and have active characteristics.

However, in terms of the composition, the proportion of organic matter is very small; minerals are the most important components of bones.

These minerals mainly include ions such as calcium, phosphorus, sodium, magnesium, and iron.

Calcium ions are the most abundant, being the main mineral ensuring bone hardness, and calcium ions also account for the largest proportion of ions in the body, making up about 2% of the body weight.

Phosphorus ions rank next after calcium ions, making up about half of the total amount of calcium ions.

In the bone ashes of the human skeleton, calcium ions and phosphorus ions account for 36% and 17%, respectively.

Ideally, the ratio is about 2:1. An imbalance in these proportions can lead to many bone problems; a high calcium ratio leads to bone spurs, while a high phosphorus ratio leads to calcium deficiency.

The annex room was dimly lit, and the interior of the stove was pitch black. When Lu Chuan stirred the ashes, faint green ghost lights appeared, commonly known as ghost fire, a reaction occurring when phosphorus ions meet air.

"Take it away first."

Although it was confirmed that the annex room was where Song Tiejun dismembered and burned the head of the body, determining exactly how and why the crime happened, his motive, the primary crime scene, and why the timeline is so extended cannot be discerned through investigating the scene alone.

The next focus of the work is on interrogation.

Wang Song, in his unit, was a pre-trial specialist and personally conducted the interrogation this time.

"Song Tiejun, tell us, how many people did you kill in total?"

"As many as you say... that’s how many."

Sitting on the interrogation chair, Song Tiejun showed no expression, his eyes lifeless, like dead fish.

This was evidently very uncooperative.

"Didn’t you fish out 5 bodies from the Wang Family River? All five of them were killed by me. Just sentence me to death and execute it right away. There’s no need to ask more; I don’t want to say anything else."

As expected, after that, Song Tiejun remained silent, regardless of what was asked.

"Song Tiejun, do you think by staying silent and saying nothing, you can escape the legal punishment?"

"I never thought of escaping any punishment. I admit I killed those people. Just sentence me to death, what’s with all the questioning?"

"Why ask?"

"Do you remember the victim Su Mo from the Good to Come Again Massage Shop?"

"Of course, I remember," Song Tiejun nodded. "I think I killed her around the end of last year, November? I’m not very clear on the exact day."

"Why did you kill her?"

"Why? Because she fucking raised the price afterward. We agreed on two hundred eighty, and when it ended, she insisted on three hundred."

"Then she fucking insulted me with ’Mămă Pī!’"

"If I didn’t kill her, I’d be letting myself down!"

Song Tiejun suddenly got emotional as he roughly described the murder process.

"Where did you kill her?"

"In the taxi, I strangled her."

"She just went out with you?"

"I said to spend the night, and she came with me."

Wang Song sighed.

In the investigation by the criminal investigation unit, they found that Su Mo’s family had a mother with cancer and a father paralyzed on one side.

The reason Su Mo started working in massage was to earn money for her mother’s surgery.

Eighteen thousand yuan, a life.

Just when Su Mo almost had the money ready, she was killed by Song Tiejun.

"Then how about Chen Wang, who sold rice; why did you kill him?"

"Why? I went to his place to buy 5 pounds of rice, but that bastard shorted me by giving only 4.8 pounds."

"I went to argue and ask him to give me the missing rice, and he said I took the rice out secretly at home and came to make trouble."

"Then that bastard also insulted me with ’Mămă Pī!’"

"Damn it, I had to kill him!"

"The taxi driver, why did you kill him?"

"He stole my job and insulted me with ’Mămă Pī!’"

In the monitoring room next door, Li Donglin and others were watching the interrogation.

"Specific language trigger?"

Song Mingguang frowned slightly, whispering.

In answering why he killed Su Mo, the taxi driver, and Chen Wang, who sold rice, Song Tiejun mentioned a consistent line, conflicts erupted when the other party insulted him: ’Mămă Pī.’

This is a Sichuan Province dialect, notably a harsh insult.

The conflicts between Song Tiejun and these victims weren’t significant. With Su Mo, it was over a 20 yuan difference, with the rice seller it stemmed from a 0.2-pound shortfall, and with the taxi driver, it was because the latter cut the queue and took his job opportunity.

If you delve into it, these are minor, everyday disagreements.

In everyday life, it’s impossible for Song Tiejun to have only had such small conflicts with these few people—such friction is essentially a continuous process.

As of now, it seems that Song Tiejun only killed these five people, and the three highlighted individuals here were all due to the insult ’Mămă Pī.’

This brings to mind the victims’ backgrounds.

Either they’re from Sichuan Province, or they had family or ancestors who migrated from there.

In essence, these individuals were likely able to speak the Sichuan dialect.

And Song Tiejun’s wife’s family he married into... wasn’t it from Sichuan Province?

The others noticed, and Wang Song conducting the interrogation obviously spotted this too.

"It’s not because you had conflicts with them that you killed them... but because these people insulted you with ’Mămă Pī?’"

A suddenly agitated Song Tiejun became silent.

Afterward, regardless of what Wang Song questioned, he remained unresponsive.

"Wang Song, come out, let’s adjourn today’s interrogation here."

Li Donglin sent a directive to Wang Song to end the interrogation.

"Everyone to the meeting room for a meeting."

In the meeting room, the atmosphere was much more relaxed compared to the last reflection.

Although many details of the case haven’t been resolved yet, the culprit was caught; the remaining issues were just a matter of time and effort.

The case was effectively solved.