Diary of a Criminal Investigator-Chapter 397: Whose Responsibility Is It

Being a police officer often means feeling sympathy for killers.

Lu Chuan has been a police officer for only a short time and hasn’t encountered many such cases, but Liu Guodong, Yang Sen, and Old Bai have been detectives for twenty or thirty years and have come across many such cases.

Take, for example, the migrant worker who caused a bloodbath at the Mountain Water Court sales office, named Wang Youde.

Wang Youde left the countryside at 18 and worked in Haizhou City for over 30 years.

From a young man full of dreams and vigor, he became an over-50-year-old migrant worker.

This "old man" isn’t an exaggeration but a description, as 50-something Wang Youde looked older than the 70-year-old retirees in the city.

His face was blackened, with wrinkles like those carved in marble, and the calluses on his palms piled layer upon layer like millefeuille in a bakery.

After drifting in Haizhou City for over thirty years, his biggest dream was to have his own home, his own house in this city.

In his fifties, he finally paid a down payment with all his life savings and bought a house of his own.

Though the house was small, poorly located, and only 70 square meters, with a net area of just 43 square meters after public sharing.

But this 43 square meter house was Wang Youde’s home and lifelong spiritual support.

After paying the down payment, Wang Youde waited a year before the house was handed over to him, during which time he visited the construction site every night after getting off work.

After a year of waiting, the house was finally his.

But after finishing the decoration and moving in, Wang Youde found the house unlivable.

Outside the bedroom and living room windows were two huge fans, and the building’s entire exhaust was there.

At night, the continuous operation of the fans caused such noise that it even gave Wang Youde tinnitus.

Having worked at construction sites for years, he sensed something was wrong and asked an engineer from his worksite to take a look.

The engineer told him outright that the house had a design flaw; it shouldn’t be a commercial residence but a ventilation shaft, uninhabitable.

Thus began Wang Youde’s long journey for rights protection.

The first person he went to was the sales clerk who sold him the house.

At first, she explained and received him, but later, when he returned, she ignored him and even avoided him.

Afterwards, he could only find the sales manager.

The manager simply said: Is this building sold to you by me? No? Then go find who sold it to you.

Wang Youde’s limited primary school education left him speechless against the sales manager’s words.

Indeed, the house was sold to him by the sales clerk, so what did the manager have to do with it?

But the sales clerk wouldn’t see him, she avoided him as soon as he came, and Wang Youde couldn’t find her at all.

Left with no choice, Wang Youde began seeking solutions everywhere.

He went to various associations and units, visiting countless places.

Countless places.

As Wang Youde said, they all had good attitudes but claimed the problem wasn’t theirs, giving him advice to find others. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

After going around and around, no one could solve it.

Eventually, Wang Youde returned to the sales office.

That time, the sales clerk was busy selling and couldn’t avoid him.

"You chose the house yourself, and there’s no quality issue. The noise is a bit loud, just bear with it; you’re a laborer, not delicate enough to care."

In interrogation, Wang Youde recalled: "Her eyes were filled with ridicule and disdain, knowing I could do nothing against her."

After that, Wang Youde left without saying a word.

Behind him was the mocking laughter of the sales clerk.

Back home, Wang Youde bought a bottle of Yellow Cap Fenjiu he was never willing to drink, a pack of cigarettes costing thirty yuan, a pig’s ear, a marinated pig tongue, and a bag of peanuts.

He sat silently in his home until dawn, and the next morning, after the fan stopped at sunrise, he wrote a will, took a hatchet from the kitchen, and tucked it behind his waist.

"I’m an honest man, you can bully me, but you can’t keep bullying me. When I’ve been treated unfairly and have nowhere to go, I can only kill someone."

This was Wang Youde’s answer during police interrogation when asked why he killed.

That morning, he went to the sales office.

Since he said nothing when he left the day before, the sales clerk thought he had given up, so this time she didn’t avoid him.

"Why are you here again?"

Perhaps Wang Youde’s alcohol smell made the sales clerk uncomfortable, and she covered her nose with an expression of disgust.

This became the final trigger for Wang Youde’s crime.

An ax rose and fell, blood spurted three feet high!

For two lives lost, Wang Youde would undoubtedly be sentenced to death.

But would his death end this matter?

Was it really only Wang Youde who killed them?

Didn’t others have any responsibility?

They did, but that was useless.

There’s also Old Yang’s question of what happened to the house in the end.

In reality, when the sales clerk sold the house, she might not have known it was a fan outlet and potentially noisy.

She was just trying to earn commission.

The sales manager also had his own difficulties. People often canceled purchases for various reasons: divorces, deaths, family disagreements; if he granted every refund, he’d be fired the next day.

So once a house was bought and paid for, returns weren’t an option unless upper management intervened.

As for the association, the house had no quality problems, so they couldn’t do anything.

The environmental department noted that the fans were necessary auxiliary facilities; they couldn’t shut them down as it would violate fire safety codes.

The fire department explained the fan locations were pre-approved and compliant with city planning.

It seemed that in the end, Wang Youde was doomed.

After the deaths, people spoke up, indicating design flaws and shared responsibility between developers and designers.

But why did no one speak before Wang Youde killed?

Lu Chuan felt a heavy, indescribable unease.

Old Bai set down the brush he was using, placing the Small-leafed Padauk beads on the table.

"The precinct has stepped in and is keeping an eye on this, having interviewed the developers, who promised to immediately provide Wang Youde’s family with a new house."

Lu Chuan was silent.

The precinct didn’t actually have jurisdiction over this matter.

Interviewing the developers wasn’t proper procedure.

But evidently, it worked.

If Wang Youde had approached the precinct at first, and if he knelt before the precinct chief, perhaps the outcome would have been different.