National Forensic Doctor

While waiting for the collection of physical evidence, Lang Heng accompanied Jiang Yuan, reviewing photos of various items of evidence with the onsite criminal police officers.

This case involved a large amount of physical evidence, and due to the difficulties faced by the special case team in the investigation, a large amount of evidence had been collected. However, after reviewing all the photos of the evidence, Huang Qiangmin had a realization and said, "The windows were all sealed shut, so the door was the only way in or out. The lock... can be said to be the key evidence."

As the long-standing captain of the Criminal Police Brigade, Huang Qiangmin had considerable experience with such homicide cases. He looked at Jiang Yuan with a hint of satisfaction.

Huang Qiangmin speculated that when Jiang Yuan had asked for the evidence to be collected, he had specifically mentioned the door lock, which was most likely an intuition. At that time, Jiang Yuan had not yet fully reviewed the evidence materials, and did not know that in addition to the lack of evidence pointing directly to the killer, the various items of evidence in the room were also insufficient to prove anything—If it wasn’t intuition, then being able to deduce this without having read the complete evidence materials would be even more impressive.

Huang Qiangmin felt that he really deserved some sort of mentorship award!

"We also checked the door lock before," Lang Heng knew what Jiang Yuan and others were getting at and said: "In fact, it was because we checked the door lock that we focused on Mai Zuqing. There were no typical lock-picking traces on the victim’s door lock, so the murderer most likely had a key, or else they must have tricked their way in."

"Having a key... could it also be a lover?" Huang Qiangmin was not trying to be argumentative, but he was just raising a possibility.

Lang Heng slightly shook his head: "We’ve also made some inquiries about this aspect, and the victim Sui Yingxue was very busy taking care of two kids being a full-time housewife, shopping for groceries, cooking, and picking up the children. We’ve talked to some of her close friends, checked her WeChat, reviewed the apps on her phone, and basically, there is very little chance that she had a lover."

The evidence before was one thing, but if the phone checks were clean, then it was very likely that things were indeed clean.

However, criminal detectives are always skeptics, so Huang Qiangmin asked another question: "Could there be a second phone?"