Chapter 383: The Fire Ten Years Ago

Genius Detective

Chen Shi said, "Let's consider this killing and arson event as the x event. Judging by the frequency in the dreams, the x event has a more profound impact on Wang Sunxu than Teacher Xu. In the next two days, I’ll check the police files."

kk said, "I don't understand something. It’s just three dreams. You guys came up with all those explanations. Can you really dig out the incidents from those years like that?"

Sun Zhen pushed his glasses up his nose and said, "Although I can't interpret dreams, I have seen related documentaries. The formation of dreams comes from stimuli. For example, if you want to pee, you will dream of going to the toilet. Sometimes this stimulus comes from the heart, such as anxiety, fear, desire, and the like. Dreams must correspond to reality."

Gu You said, "When a person talks to me about dreams, it’s as if he’s showing his heart to me. Dreams are more honest than words."

kk was pretty speechless. "What if he lied?"

Chen Shi reasoned,"I don't think that he would. Wang Sunxu isn’t well educated and he won’t be aware of this so he wouldn’t be guarded… By the way, can you talk about what happened in the past between you and Zhou Xiao?"

Gu You laughed. "We shouldn’t talk about that while we’re in such a nice and leisurely atmosphere. In fact, I have one thing I want to try. Little Worm has been brainwashed. I want to try to undo the lock in his consciousness."

Sun Zhen was extremely excited. "I will definitely cooperate!"

"Look at how excited you are." kk said with contempt.

"Then I'll be seeing you all at the agency in the next few days. By the way, has the agency printed a business card? Give me one!" Chen Shi said.

"What do you want with a business card?"

"I'll have to investigate this case myself. I'm afraid that my police consultant's ID isn’t good enough. If someone realizes that I am not a police officer, I will need to claim that I’m a private detective."

"Okay, I'll give it to you later."

Chen Shi went to the bureau early next morning. Lin Qiupu said, "You came at just the right time. Yesterday, we found a boy's body. Come to the conference room. I’ll be talking about the case."

"I'm sorry but I have some personal matters to take care of today. You guys will have to handle this yourselves!"

"This guy..."

Chen Shi went to the archives room. Although he wasn’t a police officer, all the police officers in charge of the archives knew him and instead of swiping a card to get in, he just needed to show his face.

He took out all the unsolved cases in those few years and looked for the ones that matched what they were looking for. Of course, the files couldn’t be taken away. Chen Shi could only try to remember the key elements.

A baby girl was burned to death in a bicycle factory dormitory building in 2007. The cause of the fire was a short circuit. The wife who took care of the baby said in her statement that she had gone out to buy food and had put the baby to sleep at home. Her daughter had burned to death by the time she got back.

The couple were high school classmates and had known each other for a long time. After marriage, they had a happy life and gave birth to the crystallization of their love in the third year.

Chen Shi found that during the statement, the wife had repeatedly mentioned how good her husband was to her, and had only mentioned the death of her daughter once. The wife had divorced parents.

Now that he had seen it by accident, Chen Shi couldn't ignore it. He wrote down his opinion on a note and put it in the file. "The cause of the fire should be the focus of the investigation. The wife is suspected of killing the baby."

In 2007, a paint warehouse on Nanhai Road caught on fire. Two scorched corpses were found in the fire. One lay there in a fighting pose and there was a lot of smoke and dust in his respiratory tract. He was judged to have been burned alive. The other corpse had no smoke and dust in his respiratory tract and had been burned after death. However, the strange thing was that the corpse that was already dead lay on top of the corpse that was burned alive.

The person who had burnt to death was the security guard of a nearby housing district. The identity of the other corpse was never determined. All the people that could be related to the case had their DNA checked, but nobody was found to be a match.

Chen Shi wrote down his opinion on another note. "The security guard is the killer. The fire that he set was too big and cut off his escape path. He wanted to use the body on the ground to break through the fire."

A fire had broken out at the 19th middle school in 2008. The woods behind the school dormitory had caught fire. A couple was burnt to death and there were copper wires surrounding their bodies.

Three homeless children who had snuck into the school were arrested afterwards and their confessions were very consistent with one another. They said that they had burned the wires they collected in the woods that night in order to take out and sell the copper wires inside. They may not have put out the embers completely, so it led to a fire...

The three homeless children were sent to correctional facilities for manslaughter and were released in 2018.[1]

Chen Shi thought for a moment and wrote down his opinion on another piece of paper. "Suspect that the three had colluded to come up with a story beforehand. The wires might have been used to restrain the victims. This was murder."

Then there was a fire in a mansion on Shengyang South Road in 2008. The woman who had burned to death was a 38 year-old woman who lived alone. According to investigation, she was the mistress of a rich man who had previously died. Although a nanny had also been hired to work at the villa, it was Christmas. The victim, who had studied abroad, had retained the habit of celebrating Christmas. She had given the nanny the day off and had been home alone.

Traces of unleaded petrol were found in the fire and were found to have been taken from the garage. What was strange was that the deceased's body was full of jewelry, and her hands and feet were restrained tightly by necklaces. The jewelry had melted and adhered tightly to the deceased's bones.

The autopsy report of the deceased revealed that she had been beaten, had suffered multiple fractures, and was subsequently burned to death while she was alive.

The case was called the "golden corpse burning case" at the time. The total value of the jewelry wrapped around the deceased's body was nearly 300,000. The burned mansion was worth more than 10 million. The deceased's assets were not lost. They were inherited by a distant nephew.

The police investigated all the people who had bad blood with the victim, but they couldn’t find a definite suspect, so the case has been unsolved till now.

After reading the file, Chen Shi immediately felt that this was the case he was looking for. He picked up the file and went out. He was stopped by the chief of the archives section, "Consultant Chen, these cannot be taken away without the signature of the bureau chief."

"I'm sorry!" Chen Shi was so excited that he phoned Lin Qiupu.

Lin Qiupu came over to ask, "What's wrong?"

Chen Shi tapped the file in his hand, "I want to review this case!"

"Are you joking? I have a child murder case going on right now. Instead of helping, you want to review this old case?”

"This case may be related to Zhou Xiao."

"Are you sure?"

"I’m sixty percent sure."

Lin Qiupu thought about it and felt that it wasn't very likely. He said, "I don't believe your nonsense. Where did you get the lead from? Don't tell me that it's from a random epiphany where you suddenly thought that you needed to review old cases and somehow you uncovered an earth-shattering secret!”

Chen Shi smiled bitterly. "How about this? I’ll help you with the child murder case. Then you need to authorize me to investigate this case. How about it?”

Lin Qiupu raised a finger, "If you can solve the case within a day, I’ll agree!"

"Only one day?"

"How free do you think I am to play with you every day?"

"Okay, okay, I’ll go and have a look... Keep this file for me."

Lin Qiupu saw several files still on the table, and said, "You should put them away after reading them!"

"In those three files, I wrote some suggestions on how they should be investigated. Take a look. I’m helping you to increase the case-solving rate." Chen Shi winked.

Lin Qiupu smiled bitterly. He was simply increasing the workload.

1. Unsure why this case was left in the unsolved section. I don’t know anything about the case filing procedures in China though.

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