Reborn in 1995, Criminal Investigation Records

"This is it, huh?" Zhou Yang and his companion led Lao Liu to Xiangjiang Square, and Lao Liu made a puzzled sound.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Yang squatted down and quickly noticed something unusual; the place was too clean.

"It looks like this has been scanned!" Old Liu squatted down as well, his brows furrowing.

It seems I'm destined to miss out on the sanitation department's banner and bonus.

Afterwards, Zhou Yang and Lao Liu began searching the vicinity, while Wang Chao went to inquire about what had happened.

As a result, nothing was found nearby, only some scattered bits of cigarette ash in the nooks and crannies, but Zhou Yang did not collect them.

On the one hand, existing technology simply cannot achieve this, unless one is a deep smoker using a wet filter, that is, someone with abundant saliva secretion who tightly closes their lips and often "inhales backwards" while smoking. Another condition is that the ash that is close to the filter and has not completely scattered will have a slight chance.

But now, these scattered cigarette ashes are almost of no reference value.

Soon, Wang Chao returned.

According to him, at the time of the incident, a bystander somehow spilled the sugar he had bought there, and later someone else cleaned it up for him.

"You mean, at the time of the incident? When we were at the scene?" Zhou Yang looked at Wang Chao seriously.

"Yes, this lady was also squeezing in to look, and she found that there was sugar all over the ground. She wanted to rub some up by hand, but someone just swept it up with a broom!" Wang Chao nodded.

"Where did he borrow the broom from? And where did the sugar go?"

"Did the witness say what happened to the sugar afterward?" Zhou Yang asked Wang Chao.

Seeing Wang Chao shake his head, Zhou Yang's expression changed instantly, and his gaze shifted rapidly: "Uncle Liu, how many trash cans are there around the square?"

"Eighteen!" Old Liu answered immediately, almost without hesitation.

"Looking for white sugar!" After going around in circles, sure enough, there was no trace of white sugar in any of the eighteen trash cans.

Wang Chao frowned at the two men: "Grandpa Liu, who cleans up, is here. He didn't collect any trash before he went back, and no other sanitation workers came here. Did he take it back with him? He's really something, carrying a broom and dustpan everywhere he goes. It's a bit like..."

At this point, his eyes widened as he looked at Zhou Yang: "Could it be...could it be..."

"Yes!" Zhou Yang nodded. "The person sweeping up the sugar at the time of the incident is most likely the murderer!"

Wang Chao suddenly kicked a tree next to him, which caused some trouble. You see, at the time, he was asking Zhou Yang what he was looking for.

Zhou Yang's response was to find the murderer, and he even scanned the onlookers.

"If I had been more careful, would I have caught the murderer back then?" Wang Chao tugged at his hair in frustration.

Zhou Yang patted the other person on the shoulder: "Don't even mention you, anyone who saw that person sweeping up sugar wouldn't think that person was the murderer!"

"Would it be the same if you were in that situation?" Wang Chao looked up.

"Me too!" He didn't say it aloud, though, because there was no need to, as it might leave a deeper impression.

"Brother Chao, you need to find that witness right now!" Zhou Yang said. "I'll contact the police station and get the rest of the team and the local officers to help us get the suspect's physical characteristics and escape route!"

After saying that, Zhou Yang asked Wang Chao to take Lao Liu to find the witness while he went to look for a public phone.

To be honest, communication in this era is a huge problem, extremely inconvenient, but on the other hand, it's also very inconvenient for criminals.

He remembered that in later years, you could buy a card for a few dollars or a dozen dollars, use it up and throw it away. You could buy another one, but they weren't registered under your real name. It was quite a headache back then.

After Zhou Yang finished his phone call and explained the situation, he could clearly feel Liu Chengyu's excitement. Although it was a bit premature, he didn't dampen his enthusiasm, because having a witness was a huge step forward for the investigators.

Zhou Yang, however, felt less optimistic—the murderer had come to destroy the evidence.

Perhaps realizing it too late, the killer recalled the cigarette butts he had left near the scene, or perhaps he had heard of or learned about DNA technology. Just in case, he returned to the scene. Picking up cigarette butts would attract attention and leave an impression, so he pretended to have spilled sugar and cleaned it up.

However, in Zhou Yang's opinion, such a cover-up was not as good as pretending to pick up cigarette butts, which would not arouse suspicion.

"It will probably get harder and harder from here on out, and the clues will become fewer and fewer!" Not to belittle himself, Zhou Yang knew that his opponent was a serial killer, but after killing one person, the other party realized his shortcomings and had become so bold as to return to a place just a few meters away from the scene to destroy his DNA again. Such a rate of growth was terrifying.

With the help of colleagues who rushed to the scene and police officers from the local police station, five witnesses were eventually identified.

Of the five, two noticed that the other was sweeping up white sugar.

The third one encountered a person carrying a broom and dustpan.

The content seen by these two groups is not entirely different, but the differences are huge.

Among those who saw the people sweeping up sugar, the person who saw them was wearing a baseball cap and carrying a broom, while the person seen by the dustpan team had long hair.

The person in the sugar group was about 170cm tall, while the person in the broom and dustpan group was about 175cm tall and wearing glasses.

Neither team provided a specific description of their appearance, since one was wearing a hat and the other had long hair, both of which completely obscured their faces.

At first, both the brigade and the police station thought that these people had a memory lapse or that they had filled in some things in their minds. But in the end, they found that this was the truth, and the two groups saw completely different things.

This is enough to show that the other party was deliberately disguising themselves in order to disrupt the police investigation, and it also demonstrates the cunning of the suspect.

"Zhou Yang, will we be able to catch the murderer this time?" Wang Chao suddenly asked in the car on the way back to the station.

Zhou Yang looked at the other person and nodded emphatically: "Brother Chao, what you're saying is nonsense... Do you even know what 'adding legs to a snake' means?"

"You mean, he went too far?" Zhou Yang noticed that Wang Chao seemed to be more intelligent when he was driving than when he was in the office.

"Yes!" Zhou Yang recalled the testimonies from both teams: "He could have easily used only one disguise, which might have led us into his trap. But he insisted on adding something different, which clearly tells us that both sets are fake!"

Wang Chao nodded vigorously. For some reason, whenever he heard Zhou Yang say that the case could be solved, he felt a strange sense of peace.

Although Zhou Yang spoke lightly, he was only trying to comfort Wang Chao; he himself was unsure of the situation.

Why would the killer make two sets of disguises? Was it really as he claimed, a half-baked expert, and just adding unnecessary details?

Perhaps there's an even deeper meaning—it's a provocation against the police!

Just a few hundred meters from the municipal bureau, Zhou Yang suddenly spoke up: "Go to the sanitation department, and also have the bureau send someone to keep an eye on Old Liu and his son!"

Wang Chao's face twitched, and he gripped the steering wheel tightly: "Okay!"