eurekapd Chapter 1238 Arrest of Zhou Zhiqiang
Chapter 1238 Arrest of Zhou Zhiqiang
After removing his helmet and mask, the driver was not Zhou Zhiqiang, but a villager from a neighboring village who had attempted to break through the checkpoint out of fear of being caught driving without a license. "Continue the search, don't let any suspicious persons slip by!" Xiao Zhou instructed his team members, keeping a close eye on passing vehicles. He knew that Zhou Zhiqiang was likely to disguise himself and try to escape via the highway.
The third group, led by Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun, used drones to conduct an aerial search of the mountainous area. On the thermal imager screen, in addition to the heat sources of wild animals, a faint human heat source was found in an old factory building 3 kilometers away from the abandoned mine. "Something's up here!" Xiao Sun controlled the drone to approach the old factory building. The footage showed fresh footprints at the factory entrance and broken window glass, as if someone had entered from there.
"Report to Xiao Wang immediately, we're going to check the old factory!" Xiao Yang led his team towards the old factory. Just as they reached the door, they heard coughing coming from inside. "Zhou Zhiqiang? Is that you in there?" Xiao Yang called out, but there was no response from inside the factory, only the "whooshing" sound of the wind blowing through the windows.
The team members cautiously entered the factory, which was filled with discarded machine parts, and the dust was so thick it reached above their ankles. The thermal imaging camera showed that the source of the human heat was in the innermost warehouse. "Listen up, you inside, come out and surrender!" Xiao Yang shouted towards the warehouse. The warehouse door slowly opened, and a figure emerged—an old man who had gotten lost while gathering herbs in the mountains, not Zhou Zhiqiang.
"Grandpa, are you alright? We'll take you down the mountain." Xiao Sun stepped forward to help him up, and the old man said gratefully, "Thank you. I went up the mountain to collect herbs yesterday, but I got lost and had to hide in this factory for the night." After clearing up the misunderstanding, Xiao Yang contacted Xiao Wang again and learned that Zhou Zhiqiang had been apprehended in the mine. His heart finally settled down.
At 11 a.m., Xiao Wang led Zhou Zhiqiang, who was handcuffed, out of the abandoned mine. Sunlight shone on Zhou Zhiqiang's face; his eyes were vacant, his hair was disheveled, and his body was covered in mud. "Take him to the police car and return to the branch immediately for interrogation!" Xiao Wang told his team members, while he stayed at the scene to direct the team to investigate the farm tricycle and the mine shaft.
In the back of a farm tricycle, team members extracted a small amount of black fiber, which matched the fiber composition of Li Baoren's jacket; deep in the mine, a size 43 leather shoe print was found on the ground, perfectly matching the shoe print characteristics at the crime scene. "This evidence is sufficient to prove that Zhou Zhiqiang is the murderer of Li Baoren!" Xiao Wang said firmly, looking at the investigation record.
At this moment, the technical department reported: "Li Baoren's DNA was found on the black jacket found in Zhou Zhiqiang's house; the soil on the shovel was completely consistent with the soil in the cornfield, and there was a small amount of blood on the shovel head, which was identified as Li Baoren's blood." The chain of evidence was now completely closed, and Zhou Zhiqiang's crime was irrefutable.
The police car drove away from the mountains, heading towards the Criminal Investigation Detachment. Zhou Zhiqiang sat in the back seat, his head resting against the window, watching the mountain scenery gradually recede into the distance. He kept muttering, "I shouldn't have been greedy for that little bit of money... I shouldn't have killed him..." He remembered the 3000 yuan in wages he owed Li Baoren last year, the time he lured Li Baoren out this year under the pretext of "working," the argument in the cornfield over repaying the money, and the scene where he accidentally killed Li Baoren. Tears of remorse streamed down his face.
At 1 p.m., the police car arrived at the Criminal Investigation Detachment, and Zhou Zhiqiang was escorted out and taken to the interrogation room. Li Ming stood at the entrance of the detachment, watching Zhou Zhiqiang being escorted away, and said to the team members beside him, "Thank you for your hard work. In the next interrogation, we need to focus on breaking through the details of his crime, reconstructing the truth of the case, and giving Li Baoren's family an explanation."
The interrogation room of the Criminal Investigation Detachment was brightly lit, its light glaringly cold. Zhou Zhiqiang sat in a metal interrogation chair, his hands firmly handcuffed to the armrests. He wore a gray prison uniform, his hair still smudged with mud from the mountain mines, but his eyes held a deliberate defiance as he occasionally glanced at Xiao Zhou and the recorder behind the interrogation table, as if testing the police's limits. From the moment he was brought into the interrogation room until now, he had remained silent, using only silence to withstand the pressure of the interrogation.
"Name, age, occupation." Xiao Zhou's voice was calm yet carried an undeniable authority. The pen tapped lightly on the record paper, breaking the silence of the interrogation room. Zhou Zhiqiang's Adam's apple bobbed, a mocking smile playing on his lips. "Didn't you already find out everything? Why are you still asking me? Zhou Zhiqiang, 42 years old, odd jobs." His voice was hoarse, carrying the weariness of someone just emerging from the mine, yet he deliberately feigned nonchalance. His fingers unconsciously rubbed against the handrail, betraying his inner tension.
"Where were you from 8 PM on August 12th to the early morning of the 13th? What were you doing?" Xiao Zhou went straight to the point, his gaze fixed on Zhou Zhiqiang's face, not missing a single subtle expression. Zhou Zhiqiang suddenly looked up, a flash of panic in his eyes, quickly replaced by anger: "I was sleeping at home! What right do you have to arrest me? Just because I had a wage dispute with Li Baoren? Whether he lives or dies has nothing to do with me!" His shoulders were tense, as if he was about to explode at any moment. "The coat and shovel you found in my house, those are what I use for work, isn't it normal for them to be covered in dirt?"
“Normal?” Xiao Zhou pulled out a test report and pushed it in front of Zhou Zhiqiang. “The black jacket found in your house tested positive for Li Baoren’s DNA; the bloodstains on the shovel head also matched Li Baoren’s perfectly; the composition of the soil on the shovel matched the composition of the soil at the burial site in the cornfield 100%. How do you explain these ‘normal’ traces?”
Zhou Zhiqiang's body stiffened visibly, his eyes darting away, avoiding the report, and his voice weakened: "That... that might be something I accidentally brushed against when I was helping Li Baoren with work. He asked me to help him build a house last year, and maybe that's when the blood got on his coat. The bloodstains... he might have accidentally injured himself while working and brushed against the shovel." His lies were full of holes, yet he still tried to struggle, clinging to the hope that as long as he didn't admit to seeing Li Baoren, the police wouldn't be able to directly link him to the murder scene.
Xiao Zhou wasn't swayed by his sophistry. He pulled out the first piece of evidence from the case file—a photograph of a farm tricycle, in which black fibers were clearly visible in the cargo bed. "The black fibers extracted from the cargo bed of your black farm tricycle are exactly the same as the fibers in Li Baoren's jacket," Xiao Zhou pointed to the photograph. "Moreover, according to the testimony of the village secretary of Zhoujiazhuang Village, around 10 p.m. on August 14th, you drove this vehicle towards the mountains, with the cargo bed covered by a tarpaulin. What were you carrying then? Were they tools for the crime to be destroyed, or evidence to prevent discovery?"