Crime of Innocence - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The case was even more suspicious than I had imagined.

Cheng Qi’an, an investigator from my firm, and I spent the entire day buried in the archives. We pulled everything: the original interrogation transcripts, the autopsy reports, and the psychiatric consultation opinions.

The more I read, the colder I felt.

Ji Ning had died of mechanical asphyxiation.

There was a string-like ligature mark on her neck, but it was incomplete and positioned unusually high.

Traces of sedatives were found in her stomach contents.

Her wrists and ankles bore multiple old scars.

It looked as though she had been tied up for long periods.

Yet, every report from back then fixated on a single narrative:

“Brother kills sister in a fit of rage, fueled by jealousy over parental favoritism.”

Even stranger was Ji Jichuan’s first formal interrogation transcript.

The pages were filled with vocabulary only an adult would use.

“Restriction of personal freedom.”

“Displacement of aggressive impulses.”

“Retaliatory injury.”

A ten-year-old boy wouldn’t normally know how to say “displacement of impulses.”

Yet, he spoke like an adult writing a confession.

Cheng Qi’an flipped through a few pages of the transcript, his expression darkening.

“It reads like a script.”

“Yeah.”

I pointed to the last page.

“Look here.”

Ji Jichuan’s signature was crooked and shaky. Beneath it was a note:

“With the communication assistance of Dr. Jiang Yueze, the patient’s emotions have stabilized, and his testimony remains consistent.”

Cheng Qi’an looked up at me.

“Your brother?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t pry. He simply turned his laptop screen toward me.

“I took the liberty of checking the connections from back then. Three months before the Ji Family tragedy, they donated a sum for equipment to the research center where Jiang Yueze’s mentor worked.”

“It wasn’t a public acknowledgment. I tracked the equipment serial numbers from old annual reports, matched them line by line to the foundation’s disclosure pages, and then dug them out of the research center’s procurement announcements.”

“The money didn’t go directly into anyone’s pocket, but it did ensure a batch of equipment that shouldn’t have been approved was installed in the lab six months ahead of schedule.”

I stared at the screen, silent for a long time.

What a fine piece of “communication assistance.”

No wonder Jiang Yueze hadn’t seemed rattled at all today.

He wasn’t just a bystander to this case.

He had been part of the game from the very beginning.

At dusk, we went to the old Ji Family residence.

The house had long since fallen into ruin, and the basement door had been replaced.

But there were still traces in the corners.

A very low, hidden latch.

A scratch from a shoe heel about 1.6 meters high.

And behind a wooden shelf, four words had been painstakingly carved with a pencil, stroke by stroke.

*Brother, don’t be scared.*

The writing was faint, as if a child had written it in secret, hiding from the adults.

Standing before that wall, I suddenly found it hard to breathe.

Cheng Qi’an reached out to steady me.

“Go out and rest for a bit.”

“Don’t touch me yet.”

I crouched down, staring at those four words, my throat tightening.

Many years ago, I had also carved words into the inside of a wardrobe door.

It wasn’t a plea for help.

It was: *I will be good.*

Because I knew that only by being good would the door ever open.

Some children don’t stay silent because they don’t scream.

They stay silent because they realized screaming was useless.

So, eventually, they change their tune.

They turn “Save me” into “I’m sorry.”

I stood up, leaning against the wall, my palms slick with cold sweat.

The wind caught the basement door, causing it to bounce slightly with a soft thud.

It was like a reminder from the outside that doors don’t just close.

“Ji Jichuan didn’t kill anyone,”

I said.

“And it wasn’t the first time his sister had been locked away.”

Cheng Qi’an nodded.

“Then who was the killer?”

I stared at the old latch and slowly let out a breath.

“Let’s find the living first.”

“Someone capable of grooming a child like this… they couldn’t have only done it once.”