Phi-Fic Chapter 1126 Chen Mei Identifies the Scene
Chapter 1126 Chen Mei Identifies the Scene
“He said he would break my leg if I didn’t pay back the 7 yuan gambling debt! I had no choice…” His voice was mixed with sobs. “On the night of July 2nd, I couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in the dormitory at the construction site. I wanted to find someone to ‘borrow’ some money. I just remembered that Zhang Lei said a while ago that he had some spare money.”
Zhao Gang's confession flowed like a burst dam, spreading across the interrogation record: "I asked Chen Mei to meet him, saying I had cheap steel bars, and he took the bait. At 7:10 pm on July 3, he came with the contract. As soon as he entered, he asked where the steel bars were. I told him they were on the balcony. While he turned around, I grabbed a steel pipe from behind the door, intending to knock him unconscious. But he reacted quickly, turned around, and pushed me." He gestured the action, his right hand clenched into a fist. "He called me a liar and said he was going to call the police. I lost my temper and hit him on the head with the steel pipe. He fell down with a thud."
“Chen Mei screamed in terror,” Zhao Gang said, his fingers digging into the wood grain of the table corner. “I told her to quickly find a rope, but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t even tie a knot. Zhang Lei suddenly moved at that moment, grabbed Chen Mei’s wrist and bit her. That’s when she got the scar. I was afraid he wasn’t quite dead, so I gave him a couple more bites…” He suddenly slammed his head against the table. “Then I thought, since I’ve already killed him, I might as well take the money from his body and dispose of the corpse without anyone knowing.”
This confession fits perfectly with Chen Mei's account: Zhang Lei did not have any money with him, and he was hit by Zhao Gang with a steel pipe during the argument. Chen Mei's scars were indeed caused by Zhang Lei's resistance. Even Zhao Gang's statement, "Since we started fighting, we can't leave anyone alive," is exactly the same as Chen Mei's description.
On the morning of the third day after Zhao Gang's arrest, before the morning mist had even dissipated, a police car pulled up outside Zhang Lei's rented apartment. Chen Mei's prison uniform was damp at the edges with dew, and the red marks left by the handcuffs on her wrists glistened with moisture. As the officers carried her upstairs, each step felt like stepping on a knife's edge, her slippers scraping and creaking on the concrete floor. Zhao Gang stumbled in the stairwell, the scab on his old injury cracking open, blood seeping out and staining his trouser leg red. He stared at the doormat at the entrance of apartment 301—it still bore a faint half-print of a size 42 shoe, perfectly matching the pattern of the construction shoes he wore.
“It’s this door.” Zhao Gang’s voice caught in his throat, his knuckles scratching white marks on the mottled door panel. Xiao Zhou gestured for the officers to open the door. The hinges of the security door creaked with rust, and a stench of formaldehyde and decay hit them—the smell of fixative sprayed by the forensic pathologist and residual blood. Chen Mei suddenly coughed violently, acid rising to her throat. She recognized the dark stains on the living room floor as the bloodstains that hadn’t been wiped clean that day, gleaming bluish-purple under the forensic light.
"Zhang Lei came in clutching the contract," Zhao Gang's gaze swept across the coffee table, the cracked glass still bearing the marks of the crime. "He had just placed the contract on the coffee table when I grabbed a steel pipe from behind the door and smashed it over his head." He gestured the arc of his swing, the dragon tattoo on his right shoulder contorting with the movement. "The first blow hit his right temple, and he fell to his knees with a thud. The contracts scattered all over the floor, one of them floating under the sofa."
Xiao Zhou bent down and lifted the sofa cushion, finding half a crumpled contract in the crevice. Preliminary testing showed the dark red stains on the edges contained Zhang Lei's DNA. "The forensic report shows a 5x6cm subcutaneous hematoma on the right temporal region of the deceased," he said, using a ruler to measure the edge of the coffee table. "The curvature of the contact surface with the steel pipe perfectly matched, causing a linear skull fracture from the first blow." Zhao Gang's Adam's apple bobbed violently, and he suddenly pointed to the balcony: "When he fell here, his hand was still gripping the balcony railing."
On the rust on the balcony railing, there was a fresh friction mark 4cm wide. DNA comparison of skin tissue fragments on the metal surface matched Zhang Lei's genotype. "When he struggled while gripping the railing, rust got embedded in his fingernails," Xiao Zhou said, holding up fingernail samples from the evidence bag. "The forensic doctor extracted iron oxide, the same component as the railing, from the nail crevices of his third and fourth fingers." Chen Mei suddenly slumped to the ground, staring at the drag marks on the floor—that 180x60cm dark mark was formed by Zhang Lei's back rubbing against the ground while he was struggling, perfectly corresponding to the forensic record of "extensive abrasions and contusions on the back."
“I didn’t expect him to be able to climb this far.” Zhao Gang’s voice trembled as he pointed his toes at the outline of the bloodstains in the center of the living room. “The second blow hit his back; the steel pipe struck his ribs, and I heard a ‘crack’ sound.” The forensic report’s record of “linear fracture of the 5th and 6th ribs on the right side” came to life at this moment. Xiao Zhou used a laser pointer to trace the direction of the bloodstains: “It took him 1 minute and 23 seconds to climb from the coffee table to the balcony. During that time, the bloodstains dripped in a parabolic pattern, with the spacing gradually decreasing from 30cm to 10cm, consistent with the progression of hemorrhagic shock.”
Chen Mei suddenly pointed to a low cabinet in the corner, where a piece of dark blue fabric—the same material as the shirt Zhang Lei had worn that day—was still stuck in the wood fibers of the cabinet's legs. "He grabbed the cabinet legs and begged us," she said, her nails digging deep into her palms, "saying that if we spared his life, he would give us all his money. Zhao Gang said, 'It's too late to give you the money now,' and then smashed his head with a steel pipe." Investigators extracted splattered bloodstains from the gap between the cabinet and the wall; morphological analysis showed they were formed during the final blow, perfectly matching the angle of the blow Zhao Gang described.
“We didn’t dare touch the body.” Zhao Gang suddenly raised his voice, pointing to the shoe rack by the bedroom door. “His leather shoes were still on the third shelf. We didn’t even touch them; we just wanted to run.” Xiao Zhou looked at the shoe rack. The shoes on the third shelf had their toes pointing inwards, and the bloodstains on the heels matched the samples the forensic doctor had taken from the soles, confirming that they had dripped after death. “The forensic doctor detected 0.3% aflatoxin on the heels,” he added, “which is the same as the rice contamination component in the deceased’s stomach contents, indicating that he didn’t change his shoes after entering the house and went directly to the living room wearing his leather shoes.”
Chen Mei's gaze fell on the washing machine on the balcony. Zhang Lei's black T-shirt still lingered inside the drum, a few strands of long hair tangled in the zipper—confirmed to be her hair. "I wanted to throw the blood-stained clothes into the washing machine," she said, her voice trembling with tears, "but Zhao Gang told me to leave quickly, he didn't even lock the door." In the washing machine's drain strainer, a piece of blood-stained cotton cloth had been found during the initial investigation; its fiber structure perfectly matched the rags Zhao Gang had used to wipe the steel pipes, confirming his confession.
Zhao Gang suddenly pointed to the chandelier on the ceiling, where there was a tiny crack in the glass shade of the bulb. "When Zhang Lei fell, he knocked over the floor lamp," he gestured to the location of the lamp base, "The metal lamp post hit the floor, cracking the bulb, and the room was completely dark at the time."