BXBX NOVEL Chapter 159
The phone didn\'t have many WeChat contacts, and the chat history only showed conversations with Wang Yonghua\'s wife Li Meijia and the other victim, Sun Xiaoning.
"So Ding Zhuangzhuang was Sun Xiaoning\'s secret boyfriend," Zhang remarked, surprised yet finding it logical. "Ding Zhuangzhuang looks almost identical to Chen Yuankun. Sun Xiaoning probably saw him as Chen Yuankun\'s replacement. Well, this suggests the murder motive was a crime of passion!"
After reviewing the chat history between Ding Zhuangzhuang and Sun Xiaoning, their relationship became clear.
Six months ago, Ding Zhuangzhuang had added Sun Xiaoning on WeChat, claiming it was love at first sight. After establishing a relationship with her, he encouraged her to seduce Wang Yonghua to extract large sums of money from him.
Their plan was to accumulate 5 million yuan and then elope together. Since Sun Xiaoning\'s parents would never approve of her marrying a mechanic like Ding Zhuangzhuang, elopement was their only option.
Ding Zhuangzhuang\'s relationship with Li Meijia was more innocent. They only occasionally dined together, and when she offered to buy him a house, he refused. Even when she proposed marriage, he declined, saying he wasn\'t worthy of her.
A particular conversation between Ding Zhuangzhuang and Li Meijia caught their attention:
[Ding Zhuangzhuang: Sister Meijia, if necessary, just settle for less money and divorce him quickly. Life is about being happy!
Li Meijia: Absolutely not! I want to drain him of every penny. Why should I leave him money to spend on his mistresses? I won\'t swallow this anger.
Ding Zhuangzhuang: But if you insist on getting so much money, you\'ll have to keep dealing with him. You\'re not short of money, there\'s no need for this.
Li Meijia: So what if it drags on? I\'m 10 years younger than him - I can outlast him!
Ding Zhuangzhuang: But you\'re not happy. Is money really that important?
Li Meijia: This isn\'t just about money - it\'s about my pride.
Ding Zhuangzhuang: Sister Meijia, I will protect you.]
Ding Zhuangzhuang\'s last message to Li Meijia was "I will protect you."
"Ding Zhuangzhuang seems to have a split personality - he exploited Sun Xiaoning and kept asking her for money, but acted so pure with Li Meijia. Could he have killed for Li Meijia?" someone speculated about the murder motive.
"It\'s possible! Li Meijia benefits the most from Wang Yonghua\'s death. Could Ding Zhuangzhuang be Li Meijia\'s weapon? I was wondering why she\'d be interested in a mechanic - she probably used her beauty to seduce him into killing for her!" Zhang analyzed.
Now with a motive established, the chain of evidence seemed complete.
However, everyone felt the case had been solved too easily - something didn\'t feel quite right.
Fang Rui recalled the repair shop owner\'s words and said, "The shop owner mentioned he had contacted Ding Zhuangzhuang multiple times, so why isn\'t the owner in this phone\'s contacts?"
"Could the chat history have been deleted? No, if he was deleting anything, he would have deleted the chats with Li Meijia and Sun Xiaoning. Why delete the owner\'s messages? Could he have another phone?"
They searched the entire house again, even checking the toilet tank, but found no other phone.
While searching through the trash, Fang Rui found a takeout box that had contained pork leg rice, according to the receipt. However, there were no food delivery apps on the phone, and the phone number on the receipt didn\'t match the one in this phone.
This all suggested Ding Zhuangzhuang must have another phone.
Fang Rui asked the technical department to check if any information had been deleted from this phone.
Fang Rui then took Mu Mian and the others to the repair shop to search for the murder weapon.
"Little Ding\'s WeChat name was \'Scavenger,\' not this. The profile picture is different too. This isn\'t his WeChat!" the owner stated confidently.
Fang Rui noted down the WeChat account. He asked, "Has the shop ever lost any repair tools? Like wrenches?"
"Last month we lost some tires. I found out an employee was stealing shop items to sell them! I fired him. I won\'t keep employees who steal!"
"When did Ding Zhuangzhuang start working here?"
"About six months ago. He had no ID card and couldn\'t find work. I felt sorry for him and took him in."
"Why didn\'t he have an ID card?"
"He said he was an orphan, abandoned by his parents and taken in by a mentally ill woman. She never formally adopted him, and the villagers didn\'t care about the situation, so he couldn\'t get registered in the household system. When he was twelve, the woman died, and the villagers drove him out. He became homeless, surviving by collecting garbage. When he turned eighteen, he still couldn\'t find work without an ID card, so he kept wandering until he ended up here.
He always wanted to get an ID card, but without household registration or any way to prove who his parents were, he remained undocumented. You know, he\'s a hardworking young man, clever too - just dealt a cruel hand by fate. Officer, has he done something wrong? He doesn\'t seem like someone who would commit crimes. He\'s just a bit antisocial, but honest and kind-hearted."
Everyone present felt moved by the owner\'s account. They sympathized with the image of a child wandering homeless and rootless, then growing up only to be forced into working illegally due to lack of documentation.
Mu Mian\'s eyes welled up with tears. If her parents hadn\'t adopted her, she probably would have starved to death - she would never have collected garbage, preferring to starve rather than deal with the bacteria in trash bins.
Fang Rui asked, "Can we examine their tool boxes?"
"Of course."
The employees put their toolboxes on the ground, and the owner brought out Ding Zhuangzhuang\'s as well. Fang Rui carefully inspected each toolbox. They all contained wrenches, and from the wear patterns and deterioration, these wrenches had clearly been used for a long time, covered in machine oil and rust, quite dirty.
Mu Mian sprayed luminol reagent in each toolbox, but none showed fluorescent reactions.
Aliali: 6749083ac4f3f33ac4814cd4"No blood traces," Mu Mian reported.
"Did Ding Zhuangzhuang like to drink?" Fang Rui asked the employees.
"I don\'t think so. He never joined us when we went drinking. He\'s very introverted, doesn\'t talk much, likes to read. And he\'s extremely skilled at car repair."
Someone couldn\'t help but comment: "Introverted? Would an introverted person dye their hair yellow? Would an introverted person two-time women?"
"His hair wasn\'t always like that. But since he\'s from out of town and people kept bullying him, he dyed it yellow so people would leave him alone. He\'s actually quite kind-hearted."
"Is he vegetarian?" Fang Rui asked.
"Vegetarian? He does like vegetables, but he eats meat too. He\'s not picky about food."
Fang Rui found this strange, as Li Meijia had said Ding Zhuangzhuang was vegetarian.
"Has he shown any unusual behavior recently?"
"Nothing unusual. He goes straight home after work every day. We don\'t really know him that well. He\'s peculiar, and we can\'t really connect with him."