Captured By The Cold Detective (BL)

Warning: brief description of a corpse, might be a lil disgusting for you guys~ ^^

***

The police soon arrived at Jiangnan Road and parked right below the apartment, drawing in quite a lot of attention, especially from idle aunties and uncles whose hobby was to make small talk all day long. In less than fifteen minutes, a crowd of people had already gathered downstairs, circling around the police cars and taking videos with their phones.

This was not the first time for Li Zhi to handle a murder case in the apartment and he could be said to have gotten more experienced in it. First, he made sure to cordon off the place, then demanded the landlord to cooperate and ask the tenants not to leave their houses for the time being. He also prepared a team to guard the gate of the apartment in case reporters would slip in under the disguise of a tenant.

Soon, the crowd was brought under control and they could only stand outside the police line and craned their necks to peek while discussing what had transpired inside.

Carrying with him a somber aura, Li Zhi slipped on disposable gloves and stepped into the house amidst the intermittent camera flashes of field officers who were taking photos of the crime scene. Even though the windows had been opened for more than half an hour, the stink in the air still lingered as if it had seeped through the cracks of the walls and floor to make its home there. He could not be more familiar with it. It was the appalling stink of death.

"Captain Li," Tak Jung-Hwa stood near the window and gave him a nod of acknowledgement.

Li Zhi made a beeline to him and glanced at the kitchen in passing. He seemed to catch a glimpse of the body inside the refrigerator, surrounded by forensic officers in protective gear who were busy gathering samples. "Mr. Tak," he gave a greeting in return. His teeth were itching for a cigarette, but sadly he could not smoke at the crime scene so he settled on rubbing his fingers together. "May I ask how you ended up finding this body?"

"Sure." Tak Jung-Hwa gave him a concise explanation of his investigation nowadays, from the small fishes that gave out Cui Yan’s name, and how they found their way to Mingguang Temple until here. Once again, he did not mention anything about Marius Morningstar.

Li Zhi listened intently without interrupting. When Tak Jung-Hwa finished talking, he followed up with another question, "You have checked the body, right? What have you concluded so far?"

Tak Jung-Hwa narrowed his eyes in contemplation. "I can’t estimate the time of death because the body shows signs of being frozen before. But so far, I didn’t spot any wounds or trauma on the victim’s body. There’s also no blood nor are there signs of a fight. If not for the location, it would have looked like he died in his sleep."

Li Zhi cast him a sideways glance. "Poison?" If the victim had not been knocked out, then the only possibility left was he might have consumed something. Poison was the first thing that popped into Li Zhi’s mind. There was quite a lot of poison in the black market that could kill without blood.

"Or..." Tak Jung-Hwa hesitated for a second before saying, "...drugs."

Li Zhi’s eyelids twitched. The current case they were dealing with had to do with drugs and now... another one popped up again?

"Captain Li!" A forensic officer poked his head out of the kitchen and beckoned to him. "Can you please come here for a second?!" He sounded mildly confused and bewildered.

"What is it?" Li Zhi walked toward him with Tak Jung-Hwa following behind.

"I don’t know if it’s just me, but... I keep feeling like this victim looks a bit familiar. What do you think?" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Li Zhi came close to the corpse and he immediately understood why the first two officers who found it had almost puked their guts out. The corpse’s unnerving position notwithstanding, he had a lot of corpse spots on his body. Adding on to the fact that he was confined in such a small and damp place, there were bits and pieces of flesh stuck to the wall of the refrigerator, and he seemed to see maggots twisting inside the decomposed flesh. And God, the smell... it had nearly reached the level of biohazard. He wrinkled his brows and gratefully accepted a mask from the officer beside him, wearing it on his face. Then he crouched down to take a good look at the corpse’s face.

Again, his eyelids twitched. A strange feeling arose in his heart. There was a little nagging doubt in the back of his mind whispering that something was amiss, but right now, he still could not put his finger on it.

"How is it, Captain?" The forensic officer asked.

Captain Li hummed and slowly stood up. "You’re right. I’m 85% certain that it’s our old acquaintance from the 510 murder case, Qin Zhen."

Tak Jung-Hwa was taken aback. He had read the case file a few times before and had taken the pain to remember every single person and evidence there. He could even recite the witness’s statement if needed. "Qin Zhen? The staff in Phoenix Ablaze who helped the victim escape, and also the one who gave the statement regarding the victim and the perpetrator’s relationship?"

"That’s right," a flicker of appreciation flashed in Li Zhi’s eyes. "But I still need further clarification from the forensic department to be sure. Have you guys collected the evidence yet?"

"Yes, it’s all ready!"

Li Zhi nodded. "Send the victim to the Forensic Center for autopsy. We need to know who he is and his cause of death."

The strange feeling persisted until the group returned to Yuyang Municipal Bureau. And it was not until the preliminary analysis report from the forensic center came out that he could finally pinpoint what had been bugging him for a while.

"Qin Zhen, 36 years old, male, Beta. A blood clot is found in his coronary arteries and the main cause of death is heart attack. From his medical records, he doesn’t have a history of heart attack, so further analysis is still needed to determine whether there’s an outside influence that triggered it. But so far, there is no trace of drugs or poison in his blood. As for the time of death..." the member of the Violent Crime Division trailed off.

His face suddenly paled as he raised his head and finished his sentence, "The approximate time is... between three to four months ago. However, because of the rapid change in temperature around the body, the forensic team is unable to determine the exact time of his death. But one thing for certain, he’s been dead for more than three months..."

Everyone in the meeting room fell silent.

"Wait wait wait...!" Kang Guanyu clutched his head, confused. "Remind me again when was the last time we saw him?"

It was Li Zhi who answered him. His calm tone did not betray the waves of turmoil in his heart. "It’s a little more than one month ago."

Kang Guanyu was dumbfounded for a second before he burst out into a fit of manic laughter, hiccuping. But nobody could blame him because that was exactly what they were feeling right now. The whole situation was so absurd that they could not wrap their heads around it.

"C–Captain, if... if Qin Zhen had died more than three months ago... then who was the one who talked to us back then? It couldn’t be... a ghost, right...?" Kang Guanyu’s voice became smaller and smaller the more he talked until it ended in a soft whisper.

Once again, heavy and dreadful silence filled the room which contained more than ten people.