S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 4 Chapter 94

Toothless Murderer 17 – Five Pawns

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Bai Yutang found a laptop and played the last interview from the hard drive Jiang Nan had given him.

When everyone looked at it, it was indeed a video of Wang Yue interviewing Jiang Nan.

The video was very clear, and the speaking voice could be heard very crisply.

Everyone frowned, looking at the "Wang Yue" in the video.

How should I put it, from their appearance, this person was indeed very much like Wang Yue, but her temperament had changed, she looked more fashionable, her short hair was very professional, and her makeup was exquisite, which was very different from the simple and sensible style that the crowd had seen when they saw her before.

"Aiya, it's like she has had a facelift." Bai Chi squinted his eyes to take a closer look.

"Ai." The twins put their arms around Xiao Bai Chi, one on each side, "Chi Chi, you have to know that women can change a lot, as long as they can put on makeup, a sow can compete with Diaochan ah!"

Bai Chi was surprised, "So powerful?"

Zhao Zhen snatched Bai Chi back from the twins so he wouldn't be taught by the two of them.

"It feels like two different people." Bai Yutang said, "There are some big differences in personality."

Zhan Zhao nodded, "It's perfect..."

"A perfect personality being acted out."

Without waiting for Zhan Zhao to finish, Zhao Jue at the door poked his head in and interjected.

Zhan Zhao looked at him resentfully – He was here to steal the limelight again!

"Is there a difference between personality acting and split personality?" Bai Yutang unashamedly asked, thinking what kind of perverted mind has produced a new kind of disease again?

"Simply put, split personality is unconscious, while personality acting is conscious." Zhan Zhao explained.

"What do you mean by conscious and what do you mean by unconscious?" The crowd tilted their heads.

At the doorway, Zhao Jue, who was nibbling on a curry bun, glanced at Zhan Zhao again, meaning – Are all you SCI illiterate?

Zhan Zhao was helpless, "It means that people with split personalities don't know that their personality is split, while personality acting is when the person in question consciously mimics another personality."

"After speaking for half a day..." Gongsun asked, "it is the same as saying that Wang Yue is an actor, right? She has been playing roles throughout her life?"

"You could say that." Zhan Zhao nodded, "She's playing several people at any given time. One of them is the Wang Yue we met and talked to previously, who is female and has acted in a variety of personas, and has excellent acting skills. And the other is this reporter, who is male."

At this time, Bai Yutang received a video call from Jiang Ping, and he opened the video call on his tablet.

Jiang Ping's face appeared on the screen, "Captain, I've found out something."

Bai Yutang nodded, signalling for him to speak.

"I checked the keywords of all the publications in the last year, and found that there were already news reports about SCI very early on, as well as some reports about Dr. Zhan. But none of the sections were very big, and they didn't cause any repercussions." Jiang Ping said, opening an electronic file of a newspaper on the screen, "This one is the earliest, a story from the time of the Killer Training Camp, take a look at the photo."

Everyone tilted their heads to look at the photo, because the photo was taken horizontally but was placed vertically, yet the words were horizontally. There was obviously not enough space, only the size of a small piece of dried tofu.

Jiang Ping helped straighten the picture.

"Huh?" Zhan Zhao stroked his chin.

Bai Yutang was also surprised.

The background of that picture seemed to be a sea of fire. The building in the back was burning for some reason, and it was messy in the front, with a high platform and some police officers arresting some kind of person. And at the very front of the picture, there were two people standing, two sidelong silhouettes, both of them seemed to be looking back at the fire and the arrest scene. Those who were familiar with Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang could tell at a glance that it was none other than Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang who were captured.

"Ah!" Bai Chi was surprised, "I remember this photo! That day when the nightclub was on fire, Brother negotiated to get the prisoner who had poured petrol on the hostages to throw away his lighter!"

Bai Yutang also nodded, "I remember this person, the drug dealer who attacked Qi Le."

"This report is quite exaggerated." Zhan Zhao tilted his head to read the content of the text. The author wrote the psychological investigation in a godly manner, and also focused on introducing the SCI unit, it was just that there wasn't enough space, and the writing style was also average. To be honest, the number of people who read newspapers nowadays itself was low, and it was normal for this story to go unnoticed as it was social news, and to put it simply, the police had caught a drug dealer with a brain problem.

"This person misunderstood criminal psychology and has developed a strong interest in the subject." Zhan Zhao frowned and pointed to the reporter's signature at the bottom, which read – Chen Yue.

"Chen Yue?" Bai Yutang frowned, "Chen Yue and Wang Yue... is it a coincidence?"

"I checked this reporter named Chen Yue according to this report." Jiang Ping said, "It will definitely surprise you all."

Saying that, he displayed several reports, "Look at it! He wrote close to a hundred reports one after another after that, all about SCI. Don't be too interested in us!"

The crowd frowned as they looked at the rows and rows of clippings Jiang Ping had lined up.

"She followed every case?" Zhan Zhao asked.

"Yeah, the newspaper she works for has a column on social issues and crime type issues, and a big chunk of it is practically all about us and about psychological crimes." Jiang Ping spread his hands, "But the section is really small, and the reader situation has not been good. Every time a questionnaire survey was conducted, this column was basically ignored by the readers. Until two years ago, the column was cancelled."

"I called the newspaper to inquire. After the column was cancelled, Chen Yue resigned." Jiang Ping continued, "I asked the newspaper's HR department to retrieve Chen Yue's former employment file to show you guys something interesting."

Saying that, Jiang Ping pulled up a few more pieces of information, and the crowd frowned as they looked at them.

One of them was Chen Yue's resume, and the first thing that attracted the crowd was his photo, which showed a man, or rather, a man who looked a lot like Wang Yue.

"Look at the comparison of the two photos." Jiang Ping put up Wang Yue's current work photo again.

"It's the same!"

With this comparison, everyone could see that it was the same person despite the obvious gender difference!

"The temperament has changed so much." Gongsun lamented, "But it's definitely the same person, and they weren't discovered? Did they forge an ID card?"

"No." Jiang Ping pulled up two ID cards for comparison.

"This is a copy of Wang Yue's ID card, and this is a copy of Chen Yue's ID card." Jiang Ping placed the two ID cards side by side for comparison.

The photos on the two ID cards however were different, and the numbers and such were also very different.

"Both are real?"

"Yes." Jiang Ping nodded.

"Both the ID card photos and the real life photos are very similar, but then again, neither can be said to be the same." Bai Yutang frowned, "But if the two of them take their ID cards out and show them to people, no one should be suspicious, the resemblance is indeed very high."

"So to say." Gongsun said, "There were originally two people, Wang Yue and Chen Yue, who coincidentally both had the Yue character in their names, and who were of different genders but looked somewhat alike, at least the photos on the ID cards of Wang Yue and Chen Yue were very much alike. Then Wang Yue pretended to be a man and used Chen Yue's identity."

"What about that real Chen Yue?" Bai Yutang asked.

"Chen Yue has been in China, and is now working as a magazine photojournalist." Jiang Ping raised an eyebrow at the crowd as he spoke, "It's just that he suddenly resigned a while ago. I checked and the day he resigned was the day Chang Yan died."

"Chen Yue is twenty–eight years old, he has no relatives. Both of his parents died when he was very young, and he only had a grandfather who suffered from mental illness. Chen Yue had been taking care of his grandfather alone until he passed away two years ago." Jiang Ping concluded, "I suspect..."

"Wang Yue has taken over Chen Yue's identity, so Chen Yue should probably be dead already." Bai Yutang said, "And Wang Yue didn't use this identity for a day or two, or a year or two, but for many years."

"One person has two identities, no wonder it's so easy to do things without being discovered."

"I looked up this Chen Yue's information." Jiang Ping said, "Chen Yue used to work in the police department."

"What?" Everyone was surprised, "He was a police officer?"

"He studied file management in college." Jiang Ping said, "After taking a lot of exams, he was accepted by the police department for an internship. His job was file categorisation and organisation, you know, the police department has a lot of old files to scan into the network to establish a shared network, and a lot of people were recruited at that time."

Everybody nodded.

"That means you have his employment file?" Bao Zheng, who had been silent, asked with a frown.

"Yes, I pulled this from the HR department's records." Jiang Ping said, taking out Chen Yue's resume from that year and putting it together with the one from the newspaper. The content was almost exactly the same, only the photo was different.

"Looking at it like this, you can see the difference. The two of them simply look alike... or rather, Wang Yue resembles Chen Yue's ID card more than he does in person." Everyone nodded and asked, "What happened afterwards?"

"Later, Chen Yue suddenly didn't come to work and just sent a letter of resignation, which the HR department was annoyed about." Jiang Ping's words were said in such a way that the crowd understood in their hearts – Presumably, Chen Yue was already dead by then.

"Wait a minute." Bai Yutang suddenly asked, "According to this, when Chen Yue was working at the police station, Wang Yue was using Chen Yue's identity to work at the newspaper."

"Without being discovered?" Gongsun also felt it was extraordinary.

"It's not impossible." Jiang Ping said, "I investigated a little, that newspaper was small and Chen Yue was treated as an intern, writing columns was part of his obligation."

"The first report under the name 'Chen Yue' was the one you just saw, but it was published a month after the incident." Jiang Ping said.

"A month after..." Zhan Zhao nodded and asked, "How are the social relations of Chen Yue, the one who worked at the police station?"

Jiang Ping smiled, "I looked for the police officers who had seen him and asked, they all remembered that he had a girlfriend, seemingly called 'Xiao Wang', and some people also heard Chen Yue call her 'Yue Yue' or something when she called. But his girlfriend never came to the police station, and she wasn't even there when Chen Yue had dinner with his colleagues from the police station, so no one has ever seen her."

"Very discreet." Bai Yutang whispered, "It seems like it has been planned for a long time."

"I guess that process was," Gongsun reasoned back, "Wang Yue was first fascinated by SCI and criminal psychology, after which she probably went around the police station or something and found out about the existence of Chen Yue, so she fell in love with him, easily gained Chen Yue's trust and made his fake identity. Chen Yue probably helped her photocopy a lot of SCI's internal police department files, which is why she has so much investigative information."

"If that's the case, that Xu Qiang who was killed in the accident also used a fake identity... did the two of them know each other originally, or is it just a coincidence?"

"At that time, the forensics department extracted fingerprints from five different people from the walls of the basement." Jiang Ping said, "I just asked the people from the forensics department to take fingerprints from the two resumes Chen Yue gave to the police department and the newspaper. The people from the forensics department successfully extracted several sets of fingerprints from the two resumes, and after we compared them, we found that the set of fingerprints on Chen Yue's resume for the newspaper matched the set of fingerprints on the basement wall. The fingerprints on Chen Yue's resume for the police station matched the set of fingerprints on the basement materials, but not on the walls. I checked them out, and they were all photocopies of relevant information about SCI's cases. And the strangest thing was that the same fingerprints were not found on the two resumes that also belonged to Chen Yue. In addition, I compared them with Wang Yue's fingerprints and found that the set of fingerprints on the magazine Chen Yue submitted to the newspaper were the same as the ones on the wall, and they were none other than Wang Yue's."

"So our deduction was proved correct." Bai Yutang said, "Originally, it wasn't strange for her fingerprints to appear in the basement, after all, she said that she had looked through them all, but now it seems... that we already have solid evidence to arrest her."

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Her tactic of one person playing two roles is really smart, it's just that she probably didn't expect that her face would be drawn by Zhao Jue."

Bai Yutang took out his phone, "Ma Han and Zhao Hu happened to go to the village to investigate, I'll just tell them to bring her back."

But before he could dial, his phone rang, and the callers happened to be Ma Han and Zhao Hu.

Bai Yutang answered it, and before he had time to speak, Zhao Hu's voice came from the other end, "Captain, Wang Yue is dead."

Bai Yutang frowned and glanced at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao received Bai Yutang's look and had a clear picture in his heart, the so–called whatever you are afraid of will come.

"How did she die?" Bai Yutang asked.

"Toothless capsule." Zhao Hu whispered, "Died on the desk at home."

The crowd sighed... It's here again.

At the same time, another phone rang.

Zhan Zhao looked at the cell phone that was lit up in his pocket and frowned.

Bai Yutang took the phone out, put it on the table and turned on speakerphone. It was the one that had been mailed to the police station previously, and the murderer was calling it.

"It went a little slow this time, and the losses were heavy." On the other end, there was a pleasant laughter. Although the voice became a bit weird through the voice changer, the laughter was obvious.

"This is my second pawn, are you satisfied?"

Bai Yutang frowned slightly, while Zhan Zhao gently stroked his chin – The second pawn?

"Isn't she shameless too?" The other party asked with a grin, "Toothless capsules are designed for people like that. There are three more pawns to go, all you elites of SCI, grab hold of them. Ha ha ha." The other party laughed smugly, "That's all for today, by the way, take care of your health, Dr. Zhan."

After saying that, with the lingering sound of laughter, the phone was hung up.

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao, and sure enough... that cat had an expression of stepping on dog poo.

Bao Zheng was angry, "Who on earth is he?!"

"The second pawn." Zhan Zhao, on the other hand, frowned, "It seems that the first pawn is Li Rui, who is paralysed in both legs, while the second pawn is Wang Yue, played by this personality."

"Head." Jiang Ping also heard the conversation at the other end, and after operating the computer for a bit, he said to the crowd, "Li Rui's fingerprints are also on the wall."

"Li Rui needs to rely on a wheelchair to get around, how did he get into that basement?" Bai Yutang was puzzled, "And he hasn't been discovered."

"That basement, it should just be a hint for us." Zhan Zhao said, "Including the fingerprints, they are all clues left for us so that we can investigate in that direction, so that the other party can enjoy the pleasure of being one step ahead of us."

"But while Wang Yue had the vehicle that followed us as a hint, the third pawn doesn't even have a hint." Bai Chi was demoralised, the opponent this time had obviously been planning for years to deal with the SCI, it was so well thought out and planned.

"It's not as if there aren't any hints." Bai Yutang inquired to Zhan Zhao, "I'm afraid it's that man with the birthmark who appeared multiple times near Wang Yue's house."

Zhan Zhao nodded, and was thinking when Bai Chi on the side suddenly poked him, signalling for him to look at the door.

The crowd turned to look at the door. It's good not to look, you'll be scared if you do...

They saw Zhao Jue leaning on the door frame in a ghostly manner, poking half his head inside. His eyes were staring at the cell phone on the table that the murderer had sent over, and his entire pupils were pitch black,.

Everyone subconsciously beat their chests – So scary, what's going on with Zhao Jue?

Zhao Jue slowly walked in, reached out and picked up that cell phone, pressing a few times, seemingly dialling back.

Not a moment later, the call actually went through, and that voice from earlier came through, "Is there something you don't understand? Or do you want a hint?"

Everyone looked at Zhao Jue.

After a long time, they heard Zhao Jue say, "You're surprisingly still alive."

......

The crowd froze – They know each other?!

Even Bao Zheng frowned at Zhao Jue.

There was a long silence on the other end, and then a cold laugh came out, "It's been a long time! Are you guiding the kids in solving crimes?"

"Nonsense." Zhan Zhao couldn't help but chime in.

"He he." The other party appeared confident, "Even with your help, it doesn't matter..."

"He he?" Zhao Jue imitated the other party's laughter and laughed as well, "Are you afraid? You'll pee your pants thinking about me, right?"

The other party didn't say anything, but they seemed to be able to hear his breathing getting heavier.

"They don't really need my help, with a product like you, you'll be caught within three days!" After saying that, he raised the phone.

"Ai..." Bai Yutang quickly stopped him, preventing Zhao Jue from slamming the phone on the ground and stomping on it.

On the other hand, a few words came from the murderer through gritted teeth, "Just wait, I'll let you know how much of a failure and how useless that group of people you admire are!" After saying that, he hung up the phone.

Everyone shook their heads and turned to look at Zhao Jue, which meant – After all this time, the problem lies with you?

Zhao Jue didn't care about this, he grabbed the collars of Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang with one hand each and shook them, "You two have three days to catch him, don't lose face for me, do you hear me!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were at a loss, "Who is he exactly?"

Zhao Jue stretched out his middle finger and decisively replied with one word, "Bastard!"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: September 23, 2023 by Angel

Edited: October 5, 2023 by Angel