Animal Detective-Chapter 91: Photograph

Shen Xin wasn’t a stranger to dead bodies.

He had seen Chen Zhongyuan’s corpse, a mangled, bloody mess hacked by countless blades.

But nothing compared to the shock of this. One second, a living, breathing person; the next, a leap into the void, shattering right before your eyes.

He landed with a dull thud just five or six meters away from Shen Xin, his body truly and utterly spread-eagled on the ground.

His arms and legs were still twitching unnaturally, a result of some reflexive muscle response.

Beneath his head, crimson blood was slowly spreading. From Shen Xin’s angle, his head looked as if it had been flattened.

A powerful, utterly irrepressible wave of nausea washed over him, forcing Shen Xin to turn his head and retch violently.

His stomach convulsed with each heave, tears streaming from his eyes. His brain felt starved for air, and under the scorching sun, a dizzy spell hit him hard.

The screams of distant residents reached his ears.

Someone was patting his shoulder.

"I... I’m fine. Upstairs," Shen Xin said, shaking his head and pointing up at the building.

Zhao Tianxing cursed, threw out a, "You guys handle this down here," and bolted into the stairwell.

Shen Xin slapped himself across the face, which helped him pull himself together a little.

Across the way, Ding Yuwei was having a similar reaction. Noticing Shen Xin’s gaze, she waved a hand to signal she was okay.

"Call 120! And call Captain Sun!"

Shen Xin shouted, then rushed forward.

The thick stench of blood assaulted his nostrils. Shen Xin knelt but didn’t dare touch Guo Chunping.

There was no telling how many bones in his body were broken.

He wanted to move his face, which looked plastered to the ground, likely preventing him from breathing.

But he didn’t dare, because the vertebrae in the back of his neck were clearly displaced.

Onlookers were already starting to gather, and heads were poking out of the windows of the apartment building above.

Shen Xin quickly got to his feet and called for Ding Yuwei to help him maintain order at the scene.

「Ten minutes later, the ambulance arrived.」

The paramedic with the ambulance asked which floor he had jumped from, glanced at Guo Chunping’s motionless body, sighed, and pronounced him dead on arrival.

A few minutes after that, Sun Zhao arrived in a hurry with his team.

"What’s the situation?"

Sun Zhao was clearly baffled as well.

’They just interrogated and released him yesterday. It’s only been one night, and he jumps off a building?’

By now, Shen Xin had completely calmed down. He shook his head and said, "It’s unclear. Brother Xing is watching the apartment upstairs. This building block has no elevator, just the one stairwell exit. I’ve also had all the residents stay in their homes, so it’s most likely... a suicide."

Of course, they couldn’t rule out the possibility that he was coerced into it.

The accompanying colleagues were already busy setting up a police cordon. The forensics team was taking photos, and the medical examiner was beginning their inspection of Guo Chunping.

"Let’s go. We’ll check upstairs."

Sun Zhao’s face was grim.

He had planned to rattle Guo Chunping’s cage, but he never expected this to be the result.

On the sixth floor, Zhao Tianxing had already picked the lock and was standing guard. "Captain Sun," he said helplessly, "there’s no one inside. I haven’t gone in yet."

Sun Zhao didn’t rush in either. He pulled the three of them into the stairwell to ask about the specifics of their surveillance.

Shen Xin had actually already replayed the events in his mind.

After Guo Chunping returned home, the lights inside stayed on until just after eleven o’clock at night before going out completely.

Throughout the night, the three of them took turns watching, and they never saw Guo Chunping leave.

Right up until the moment Guo Chunping jumped, there had been nothing out of the ordinary.

After hearing this, Sun Zhao scratched his head fiercely and crossed his arms, lost in thought.

They had just found a lead in the Liu Laibin case. With Guo Chunping dead, it felt like they were back at square one.

The key issue was that he couldn’t figure out why Guo Chunping would commit suicide.

In yesterday’s interrogation, Shen Xin had only asked about the stalking, not about Liu Laibin’s case.

Besides, even if Guo Chunping was truly involved in the Liu Laibin case, Sun Kai was the killer. Even as an accomplice, it didn’t make sense for him to just kill himself.

By the time Chen Chao arrived, the forensics team had already conducted a preliminary sweep of Guo Chunping’s apartment.

He and Sun Zhao exchanged a look, their expressions extremely grim.

The group put on shoe covers and entered the apartment.

It was a three-bedroom unit, probably a little over 100 square meters. Yuecheng Home was an older commercial housing development with a high usable floor area, so the apartment felt quite spacious.

Shen Xin’s first impression was that the apartment was very tidy.

It had some basic furniture. There was no clutter on the sofa, and the books on the shelf next to the TV were all neatly arranged.

Two of the three bedrooms were in use. A quick look around revealed nothing unusual.

Guo Chunping’s phone was also found. If the call history hadn’t been deleted, then the last call was made last night around eight o’clock to someone named Brother Li.

He was apparently the property manager of Jinhui Mansion.

Sun Zhao surveyed the room, then walked to the center of the living room and said in a low voice, "Search it. Don’t miss a single scrap of paper. I want to know why he killed himself."

He still couldn’t wrap his head around why Guo Chunping had jumped.

The team immediately began to search.

They focused mainly on the master bedroom and the living room; the other two bedrooms were completely empty, not even used for storage.

Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei were in the living room.

"Shen Xin, come look at this," Ding Yuwei called out.

She had found a photo album in a drawer of the wardrobe.

Shen Xin leaned in for a look.

They were just ordinary family photos.

"This must be his second wife," Ding Yuwei said, pointing to a young woman with long hair and a heart-shaped face, holding a robust and healthy-looking child.

Shen Xin nodded, pulling out each photo to see if anything was tucked between them or written on the back.

Judging from the photos alone, Guo Chunping must have been very happy during that period of his life.

They also found a few older photos.

One showed a woman with a thick braid, whose smile revealed prominent canine teeth. Judging by her clothes, the photo was from an even earlier era; she was likely his first wife.

There were photos of his parents as well.

That was it. They found nothing else of note.

They searched the nightstand, the trash can, and even moved the wardrobe to check every possible crack where something could be hidden.

Shen Xin did find a drug information leaflet, for stomach medication, that had likely been discarded casually some time ago. There was nothing unusual about it.

When he returned to the living room, Zhao Tianxing and the others were going through the books on the bookshelf.

They were mostly novels and history books.

There were quite a lot of books, including a complete, hardcover set of Jin Yong’s collected works.

It was clear that Guo Chunping didn’t have many hobbies. He probably spent what little money he earned on books.

Shen Xin tried to sketch a profile of Guo Chunping.

’He lived alone and probably didn’t have many friends. The apartment only bore traces of his own life.’ 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

’He worked during the day, came straight home in the evening, cooked, ate, cleaned, and then read or watched TV in his spare time.’

’Beyond that, he had no other hobbies. A very simple life.’

’When he came to Nanjiang, he must have sold his house back home. Then, in 2012, he bought this apartment for 760,000, making a down payment of 560,000.’

’He took out a 10-year loan for the remaining 200,000, with monthly payments of just over 2,000.’

’In 2012, his salary was over 6,000 a month, which gradually rose to its current level of over 8,000.’

’His car was a used one worth just a few tens of thousands.’

’So after expenses, if he had a rich social life, there wouldn’t be over 100,000 sitting in his bank account.’

’And that’s not even counting the money he got from being bought off by Sun Kai.’

But this raised another question.

’A man with such low desires, and no family to speak of.’

’Guo Chunping came from a single-parent family. His father died in a work-related accident years ago, and his mother passed away from illness in 2016 at the age of seventy.’

’So Guo Chunping wouldn’t have been in urgent need of money due to a family crisis, like a serious illness.’

’He also didn’t have any bad habits like gambling.’

’How could a man like this be bought?’

Just as he was thinking this, his colleague Tang Bing called out. While flipping through a thick copy of the *Old History of the Five Dynasties*, he had found half of a photograph inside.