Criminal Investigation Notes

Lu Junchi had never expected that Lan An would confess so easily and smoothly.

He repeated in disbelief, “You said, you are… Fine Sand?”

It was like finally discovering the answer to a long pursuit, a difficult problem that required great effort to unravel, right in front of him, making it hard to believe.

Lan An seemed to have calmed down since she was first caught. She accepted the truth and lowered her head, saying, “Yes, I am Fine Sand. For the past three years, I have been researching and making bombs, which my accomplices then deployed in the city.”

“Who are your accomplices?”

“Jie Qiu… the one who died in the explosion initially.” Lan An said, lowering her head further, “Two years ago, I collaborated with Jie Qiu. I was responsible for making the bombs, and he was responsible for deploying them.”

Lu Junchi’s brow furrowed deeper, “Your main criminal acts?”

“We conducted bombings every ten days in the city,” Lan An paused and said, “After his death, I stopped doing it. But recently, when something happened to Yu Keke, Dong An Chen came to me for help and asked what he should do, so I gave him a bomb.”

She gazed at a corner of the ground, swallowing hard, “I never thought the police would find us so quickly…”

Lu Junchi thought of that sand; it seemed she still didn’t know the sand betrayed her. He asked, “Why did you use the sand from the art studio?”

Lan An whispered, “In the sand art studio, instead of searching for other sand, I could use what was readily available… and these sands were my favorites…”

Lu Junchi and Qiao Ze remained silent for a moment, looking at the woman before them, pondering the truthfulness of her confession.

She mentioned Jie Qiu’s name, which meant that even if she wasn’t the murderer, she must have been closely following the case.

Moreover, many pieces of information she provided were accurate.

Lu Junchi stood up and handed a few pieces of paper and a pen to Lan An.

With narrowed eyes, he looked down at the woman before him, “Draw, sketch the bomb’s structure.”

This was the most direct, rapid, and straightforward way to verify Fine Sand’s identity.

As a bomb artisan, if she was the real Fine Sand, she would undoubtedly be able to reproduce the structure of the bombs she made.

Lan An glanced at him, took the paper and pen, and trembling fingers started drawing. Perhaps due to excessive nervousness, her lines were twisted, but even so, it was apparent that she had a strong artistic skill.

The outline of the bomb was quickly sketched, and she started drawing the internal details and adding labels on the outside.

Lu Junchi stood across from her, looking down at the woman and the drawing before her.

Qiao Ze remained seated but stretched his neck, wanting to see what Lan An was drawing. However, his position was a bit far, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to get closer, so he could only resist the urge and stay in his seat.

Time continued to pass minute by minute.

Su Hui supported his chin with his hand, sitting inside the observation room, silently watching everything. His vision was hazy, but he could vaguely see Lu Junchi standing beside Lan An. However, he could hear the voices from inside.

The interrogation room was extremely quiet, with only the sound of the pen tip touching the paper, transmitted to his earpiece through the microphone.

It was as if something gently touched his undamaged eardrum.

Su Hui knew that Lan An was definitely not drawing randomly. If she made a mistake, it wouldn’t take this long, and Lu Junchi would have stopped her.

Lu Junchi was now standing beside her, quietly watching her draw. There was only one situation where this could happen: the picture Lan An drew was correct.

His inference was not wrong.

The image Lan An drew gradually took shape, and then she started adding labels.

She pursed her lips, controlling the pen in her hand, and wrote down graceful characters beside it.

Lu Junchi had just listened to Zhu Baiyi’s lecture and knew the general structure of the bomb. The bomb drawn by Lan An was exactly the one that appeared in the accident.

Finally, she drew two lines and labeled them as “sand” beside them.

That was the critical position of the entire bomb, the layer of sand isolating the reagents. Once the time was up, the sand layer would leak, the two materials would mix, the reaction would take place, and a tremendous amount of energy would be generated, leading to an explosion.

The picture drawn by Lan An gradually took shape. There was no need to consult experts anymore. Lu Junchi could see that it was entirely identical to the bomb structure of the Fine Sand case.

The woman in front of him was indeed connected to everything.

Lu Junchi put away his pen and asked Lan An, “Where did you learn this method of making bombs?”

Lan An replied, “It was my father… He used to work as a blasting expert in the mining area and got to know Jie Qiu through that. He had always been interested in making these things. When I was a child, he taught me some methods of making bombs.”

Lu Junchi looked at the woman before him and asked, “Why did you kill those innocent people?”

In the past two years, so many people had died, and among them might be scum like Duan Siyuan, who didn’t deserve any sympathy, but there were also many innocent people, including several police officers.

Thinking about those people made Lu Junchi’s eyes feel sore.

Lan An lowered her head and said, “The locations were randomly chosen by Jie Qiu. I just provided him with the bombs.”

“You should know that what you provided him with was dangerous and could take lives. Without your help, Jie Qiu wouldn’t have caused such significant harm. All these things are connected to you,” Lu Junchi emphasized, “Why?”

These three words were not just asked by him as a police officer to uncover the truth and interrogate the suspect but also on behalf of those departed souls.

Lan An’s voice trembled, “There’s no special reason. It’s just… because I resented them. We’re all human beings, so why do they live so easily while we struggle so much? All I see every day is the helplessness of life… Jie Qiu fell ill, and the hospital couldn’t cure him… Naturally, he wanted some people to accompany him in death.”

“No one lives an easy life at all…” Lu Junchi said, taking his seat again, trying to calm himself down.

He continued, “Alright, you said you’re Fine Sand, so let’s proceed with the verification. I hope you can recount your crimes in detail. When did you start? What did you do the first time, the second time, the third time… and how did you feel each time you saw those news reports?”

Upon hearing this, Lan An raised her head, tears in her eyes. “I’ve confessed everything. Isn’t that enough? I admit to all the crimes. Isn’t that sufficient? I’ve admitted it all. You’ve solved your case. Just give me the papers to sign. The next step is the legal judgment, right?”

Qiao Ze’s pen stopped recording. He didn’t know why, but Lan An suddenly changed her state from being compliant and cooperative.

She clearly didn’t want to recall those details.

Su Hui sat in the observation room, watching the situation inside. Suddenly, he stood up and pushed open the door to the interrogation room.

Lu Junchi was somewhat surprised by his entrance.

Most of the time, Su Hui wouldn’t personally interrogate suspects. One reason was his role as an advisor, and another was that he was better at sitting in the observation room, listening to their narratives and profiling the psychology of the criminals. Additionally, Su Hui couldn’t see clearly or hear well, but the headphones in the observation room helped him capture more information.

But now, he appeared in the interrogation room, facing Lan An.

Su Hui didn’t sit down but leaned against the wall. He spoke, “Your profile doesn’t match mine.”

Lan An was taken aback, clearly not understanding. “What doesn’t match?”

“The profile,” Su Hui said, “Every criminal has their own psychological trajectory, just like those sand bottle drawings you made. The inner drawings of each person are unique.”

Lan An lowered her head, her face becoming more weary.

Su Hui asked her, “How many bombs did you give to Dong Anchen?”

Lan An lowered her head, seemingly contemplating, and then she trembled as she said, “Two.”

“What color sand did you use for making the bombs the first time?” Su Hui asked again.

“The first time…” Lan An hesitated, her eyes showing some panic, and then her lips moved, “It was blue sand.”

Lu Junchi’s furrowed brow relaxed. He had felt that something was off, but couldn’t find a breakthrough. However, Su Hui quickly asked two questions and exposed the truth.

Her answers were wrong. The sand used the first time was ordinary sand. They had apprehended the wrong person; the real culprit was still at large.

The room suddenly fell silent. Lan An’s face changed, sweat dripping down her forehead. She realized she had answered incorrectly. She hurriedly tried to make amends, “I… I might have remembered it wrong…”

The three police officers looked at her. It was impossible to forget something like the first time making a bomb and detonating it. It was akin to the first time taking a life, something that a bomb maker would remember for a lifetime.

As the questioning reached this point, Su Hui no longer beat around the bush. He directly looked into Lan An’s eyes and said, “Lan An, you’re the owner of the special art studio. The work you do is something only someone with compassion would do. Since earlier, you’ve been avoiding the topic of casualties. Your indifference is an act. You can feel the pain of others; you’re not someone who would harm innocent lives.”

This was the crux of the issue.

Lan An wasn’t cold enough, cruel enough. He didn’t know how she came to know the internal structure of the bomb, but the motive to kill couldn’t be fabricated.

Now, Lan An was even more nervous than before. She bit her lip and scraped the armrest of the interrogation room with her nails.

Su Hui spoke again, “I asked you two questions. Your answer to the first question was a guess. You knew there was an explosion, so when I asked how many bombs, naturally, the answer couldn’t be one. You thought three was too many and tried to answer with two. I wanted you to answer the first question correctly because it would give you a kind of inducement, making you think my question was easy, and you could deduce the answer. You knew we tracked you through the sand, so when I asked about the color of the sand, you answered with the person’s favorite color.”

Blue, for them, held more than just a surname; it had other meanings.

Lan An’s thoughts were exposed, her lips trembling.

Su Hui continued, “He also used blue, but not as a starting point, rather as an ending point.”

“He initially used ordinary sand, and as long as he kept using ordinary sand, it would be challenging for us to catch him. But later, he switched to the colored sand from your studio.”

“Perhaps from a long time ago, this person had already prepared an escape route. Once discovered, he could shift the blame onto you… or maybe he had already planned for you to take the fall.”

“The reason he didn’t appear for those two years has its significance, and now, he’s repeating these acts for a reason.”

“Maybe this time, he used the most unique peacock blue, making it easier for us to trace it back to the sand studio and investigate Dong Anchen and Yu Keko, all with the purpose of catching you…” Su Hui’s voice was low and hoarse. He didn’t use harsh words, but each sentence he spoke was like a sword, piercing into Lan An’s heart.

He spoke the truth…

Fear appeared in Lan An’s eyes, and her teeth involuntarily chattered.

At the beginning of this interrogation, she had prepared herself mentally to face her fate.

But now, she was wavering.

After recounting all this, Su Hui lowered his head and looked at her. His voice was slightly stern, “Lan An, stop lying. Tell me, who is that person you want to protect?!”

Su Hui could sense that the person making the bombs was heartless and indifferent, treating lives as mere weeds. It was absolutely impossible for the trembling woman before him to be that person.

He had been listening in the observation room the whole time. At the end, he finally understood why something was amiss. It had gone too smoothly, everything had been too smooth…

This kind of smoothness meant they had fallen into the killer’s trap.

He had to act quickly and extract the truth from this woman’s mouth.

Because perhaps at this very moment, a new disaster was brewing in the city.

On the ground floor of a building in the Jiayu residential complex, just two streets away from the sand art studio, a figure stood by the window, lifting a corner of the curtain and peering down at the street below.

It was a small window, less than half a square meter, with iron bars separating it. Even if the window was pushed open, only a small gap would be available.

It was the only place in the room where light could shine through.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of a door opening, and the smile on his face grew wider…

TN:

Well that sounds ominous