Chapter 092: The Old Clan Chief

Again, that shadow...

The moment that familiar phrase reached his ears once more, Li Tianque felt the same instinctive unease rise in him.

He frowned slightly and studied Bai Ruixue before asking, “About that time... how are you able to remember it so precisely?”

Her expression remained as calm and unmoving as a deep old well. In a flat voice, she said, “I was on my phone then. When I heard the noise, I naturally noticed the time.”

“How big was that shadow? Was it a person, or something else?” Li Tianque asked.

“I couldn’t see clearly. It didn’t look like a person, and it didn’t look like a small animal either,” Bai Ruixue replied.

“Can you describe it a little more simply?”

Bai Ruixue thought for a moment, then said, “A long, narrow black shape. It looked almost like an elongated lizard.”

Her description of the shadow was so brief that Li Tianque suspected she might be withholding something.

At that moment, Ma Baoguo suddenly changed the subject.

“All right, all right, let’s not talk about the shadow for now. That night Lin Ya didn’t come back until very late. Didn’t either of you ask her about it?”

“No. She was with Liang Zhichao.”

“But I heard that when you were all eating at the old clan chief’s house that day, Lin Ya seemed to say something that made you very unhappy,” Ma Baoguo pressed, his gaze sharp.

“Did she? I don’t remember,” Bai Ruixue said carelessly.

Ma Baoguo studied her carefully as well, feeling more and more that this woman’s composure was unnaturally steady.

In most detective films and mysteries, the person who seems most suspicious is usually not the killer in the end.

But real life is the opposite. Only a very small number of suspects can pull off an impossible crime straight out of a detective story.

Li Tianque and Ma Baoguo understood this well, so they naturally took Bai Ruixue very seriously. After all, she was the only suspect who seemed to have a motive for murder.

But seriousness aside, the woman was meticulous. Her answers were steady and unruffled, and her expressions and tone were almost impossible to fault.

“By the way, I looked through Liang Zhichao’s statement. Around eleven, he heard someone coming out of your room. At the time, he thought that person was Lin Ya.

“But according to what the two of you said, Lin Ya wasn’t in the room when you returned.

“So who came out of the room around eleven?” Li Tianque asked.

Bai Ruixue fell silent for a moment, pushed up her glasses, and said, “I didn’t hear any such sound. Before the police arrived, no one left our room.”

Li Tianque and Ma Baoguo exchanged a glance. Ma Baoguo said sharply, “You’d better think again.”

“There was no one,” Bai Ruixue answered with certainty.

Clearly, one of the two, Bai Ruixue or Liang Zhichao, was lying.

Li Tianque looked at Bai Ruixue. This woman’s temperament, like her name, was cold and hard.

What particularly puzzled him was why such a seemingly indifferent woman would cherish those insects so much.

And how could she have let the butterflies go?

That detail seemed utterly at odds with her introverted, solitary nature.

Just as Li Tianque and Ma Baoguo were thinking of pressing further, Bai Ruixue spoke first.

“If you two have no other questions, then I’ll be going back. I still have some research reports to finish, and before I leave here, I need to complete the draft.”

“Stop right there. We haven’t said you can go yet,” Ma Baoguo said sternly.

Bai Ruixue stood rigidly in place, looking at him with cold, detached eyes.

She seemed somewhat angered, but she did not leave.

“I think you should be spending your energy on people who are more suspicious, instead of wasting the precious time of a research worker.”

“But right now, you’re the most suspicious person of all,” Ma Baoguo said in a low voice.

Bai Ruixue gave him a cold sidelong look and let out a scornful snort before firing back, “Fine. Then tell me your reason.”

“Now I’m the one questioning you, not the other way around!

“You said you saw a strange shadow. Why didn’t you tell anyone about it?

“Why didn’t you even tell Su Wei, who was living with you?”

Li Tianque thought to himself that Ma Baoguo did have a bit of skill; he had quickly thought of this crucial question.

Indeed, it was highly unreasonable.

A frail young woman, after seeing such a strange thing in the middle of the night, would surely tell her roommate at once, or ask for help from Liang Zhichao next door or Professor Lu in the lab.

“It was already very late. I thought I might have seen wrong,” Bai Ruixue said, her face still showing not the slightest change as she replied calmly.

“Oh? Then why didn’t you mention it at all when you gave your first statement?” Ma Baoguo asked, flipping through the earlier notes and pressing the question hard.

“You didn’t ask. I don’t have the obligation to bring it up myself, do I?” Bai Ruixue replied.

“You have an obligation to cooperate with the public security authorities!” Ma Baoguo said sternly. “The deceased was your classmate and colleague. Don’t you want to find the killer as soon as possible?”

“Yes, as you said, the deceased was my colleague. But classmates and colleagues don’t seem to count as a particularly close relationship,” Bai Ruixue said softly.

Li Tianque waved a hand at Ma Baoguo. “Let it go. Maybe she didn’t imagine something like this would happen at the time. It was already very late, and she may have been worried about disturbing others’ rest.”

Ma Baoguo snorted coldly to himself, thinking that Li Tianque really had a way of butting in at random.

He had originally intended to retort a few more times, but he was already very dissatisfied with the order from above telling him to cooperate with Li Tianque’s investigation, so he did not continue.

After hearing this, Bai Ruixue knew there was no reason to stay any longer. Without looking back, she walked straight out of the room.

After she left, Li Tianque began examining Liang Zhichao’s statement, while Ma Baoguo lit another cigarette and tapped irritably on the table.

Liang Zhichao was the tall, thin young man they had met on the stairs earlier.

His statement did not conflict much with the other three accounts.

But there were still two points of suspicion.

First, why had Liang Zhichao heard someone coming out of the neighboring room around eleven?

Second, if no one had come out of the room during that earlier period, then when had Lin Ya left it?

Or rather, by what means had she left?

Just as Li Tianque was thinking, Liang Zhichao was already opening the door and coming in.

After entering, Liang Zhichao first closed the door carefully, then deliberately lingered by it for a while.

He seemed to be listening to see whether the people outside had already left, and his expression turned rather strange.

When he finally sat down, he did not look at Ma Baoguo. Instead, he fixed his attention on Li Tianque and studied him with clear caution.

Obviously, when he had been at the stairwell just now, he had overheard the conversation between Ma Baoguo and Tu Dengnima, and knew that Li Tianque was the person who had previously been listed as a major suspect.

Now that he saw Li Tianque had been cleared and was even taking part in the investigation, he naturally became wary.

Li Tianque also noticed the change in his expression and smiled. “I know you may have some misunderstandings, but our station chief Ma is still here, so there’s no need for you to be too guarded.”

“Uh... no, no...” Liang Zhichao forced out an awkward smile and glanced at Ma Baoguo beside him.

Ma Baoguo studied Liang Zhichao and asked, “Do you have something you want to say?”

Liang Zhichao swallowed, slowly took out his phone, and said, “Yes... I didn’t mention this before because I wasn’t sure what was going on either.

“Mostly, after I heard that the suspect had already been arrested, I thought that if the killer had already been found, then this clue of mine probably wouldn’t be worth much.”

At this, a glint flashed in Li Tianque’s eyes.

“What clue?” he asked.

Liang Zhichao seemed to want to look back again, but quickly resisted the urge and instead held the phone out to the two of them.

The screen was paused on a chat window in WeChat, showing his conversation with Lin Ya.

The chat log stopped around eleven on the day of the incident, and the content was nothing more than lovey-dovey chatter between lovers and talk about the experiment.

The last message between them was sent at 11:20. It came from Lin Ya, and it was extremely odd, consisting of only three incoherent words:

“Old clan chief!”

Seeing the chat screen, both Li Tianque and Ma Baoguo were startled.

The time Lin Ya sent the WeChat message was clearly very close to the time she died.

In other words, when Lin Ya sent this message to Liang Zhichao, it was either a cry for help or an identification of the killer.

Of course, in most mysteries or films, clues left like this are usually the victim’s final attempt to point out the culprit.

But in real life, at the critical moment between life and death, no one abandons the instinct to survive.

This message was far more likely to have been a cry for help.