Chapter 57: Reputation

Both of them reported everything in detail to Dong Weifeng: their suspicions regarding the victim's identity, and the hypothesis that assuming the deceased was the habitual thief Li Wei, Chang Junchao might not have fled after committing the murder, but rather remained in hiding nearby.

Their views subsequently received the backing of Team Leader Dong. Following a brief coordination meeting, the team dispatched several unfamiliar colleagues to stake out the area near the crime scene to see if any suspicious individuals could be spotted.

Ning Shuyi and her partner had been running errands outside constantly, and the neighbors around the crime scene were already very familiar with them. Naturally, daytime surveillance could not be assigned to them, so she and Huo Yan took charge of the night shifts.

Originally, according to the unwritten rules within the team, nighttime stakeouts were avoided for the few female colleagues whenever possible, meaning this task should have fallen to Zhao Dabao. However, his family situation was truly exceptional, so Ning Shuyi volunteered to take his place.

For two consecutive days and nights, they came up with completely empty-handed. Whether day or night, none of the surveillance points spotted any trace of Chang Junchao.

Even though they were closely acquainted colleagues who generally got along well with Ning Shuyi, after these fruitless 48 hours passed, some people could not help but begin to worry whether Ning Shuyi's judgment was mistaken. Even if the killer really was Chang Junchao, he might have already fled far away by now, god knows where.

If that were the case, exhausting themselves day and night to keep watch near the crime scene would become entirely meaningless. Getting tired was a minor issue; the most crucial thing was that it would delay the serious business of apprehending the true culprit.

Yet Ning Shuyi remained steadfast in her previous views.

First, based on earlier investigations, it was not difficult to see that Chang Junchao had shown no abnormal behavior prior to the crime. Everything was as usual. His extremely narrow social circle, whether through cash withdrawals or mobile payments, perfectly matched his daily living expenses with no discrepancies in the accounts.

This meant he lacked the conditions to prepare in advance for fleeing, such as gathering supplies or obtaining a fake identity required for going on the run.

Second, the "family annihilation" effect exhibited by this case dictated that once the hypothesis of using the habitual thief Li Wei to disguise himself and manufacture the illusion of a whole-family massacre was established, Chang Junchao, as the mastermind, would be considered an absolute "dead man" to the outside world!

As everyone knows, times are different now; surveillance equipment and facial recognition systems in the outside world are increasingly sophisticated. As long as Chang Junchao moved about externally and showed his face during such a highly sensitive stage, it would be equivalent to risking the exposure of his whereabouts.

Therefore, someone capable of utilizing the circumstances to fabricate the illusion of a family annihilation should be able to foresee this issue.

In addition to all this, Ning Shuyi had another consideration.

"Do you all remember during our previous investigation when we heard Chang Junchao and Deng Qingrong's neighbor mention that Deng Qingrong actively disclosed to neighbors that her son had a physical defect?"

Ning Shuyi reminded her colleagues, "Previously, Chang Junchao once brought a girlfriend home, hoping to gain his family's acceptance and elevate their romantic relationship toward marriage.

"However, Deng Qingrong and Chang Rong violently opposed it and heavily interfered, ultimately causing that romance to be cut short without a good outcome.

"Moreover, the elderly neighbor mentioned that this was not the only instance. It seemed that during that period, whenever Chang Junchao, who was in his early twenties, showed the slightest sign of romance, it would never receive his family's blessings and would eventually be disrupted, resulting in nothing.

"It continued until later, when Chang Junchao himself extinguished any thoughts of romance and marriage, transforming into the quintessential 'mama's boy' who only knew how to go home and take care of his mother in the eyes of his female colleagues at work. From this, we can also see that Deng Qingrong's desire to control Chang Junchao was extremely strong.

"Yet outwardly, she disguised this intense desire for control—treating her child merely as an instrument for her old age—exceptionally well, shaping herself into the image of a loving mother.

"After the mother and son moved to live near the crime scene, the neighbors all thought Deng Qingrong was a loving mother, while Chang Junchao... suffered from a congenital disability in that regard..."

"If that rumor was fabricated, this old woman is truly heartless!" A male colleague in the team muttered upon hearing this, shaking his head with a frown and sighing.

Ning Shuyi nodded. "Regardless of whether someone is male or female, being subjected to unwarranted interference in one's freedom to marry, resulting in the inability to form normal romantic relationships with others, is in itself an unbearable ordeal.

"Furthermore, if Deng Qingrong resorted to such slanderous methods to cut off Chang Junchao's chances of romance and marriage, it must have been even more agonizing.

"For the vast majority of the thirty years of Chang Junchao's life, his attitude toward Deng Qingrong could be described as one of endurance and concession, including when the girlfriend he brought home was driven away by his parents—he never rose up in rebellion or argued.

"The only so-called resistance we were able to uncover occurred instead when Zhang Guanghui was driven to the verge of a breakdown by Deng Qingrong's harassment and came to their home to settle scores.

"Even on that occasion, when Chang Junchao spoke up for Zhang Guanghui, it still carried a strong undertone of resignation.

"Think back and recall if that wasn't the case."

The others thought about it for a moment, and finding it seemed indeed to be so, they nodded one after another.

"So I was thinking that murdering Deng Qingrong was definitely not Chang Junchao's initial plan. He inherently possesses an honest and forbearing personality. For him to finally decide to take action, an overwhelming amount of hatred must have built up inside him.

"So here is the question: when you have endured for twenty or thirty years, and finally, because your hatred is so intense that you can no longer bear it, you decide to kill this person, do you want outsiders to think that a good person was killed, or that the person killed was actually a villain?"

"Whoever slanders and smears me like that, I certainly wouldn't let them keep any hypocritical good reputation in the outside world by the end!" Luo Wei slapped the table and declared his stance.

After saying this, noticing that Dong Weifeng beside him was looking at him with a half-smile, he instinctively shrank his neck and grinned sheepishly, "Boss Dong, I'm just joking! I was just following Ning Shuyi's train of thought! We are law enforcement officers; how could we ever do something like breaking the law knowingly?"

"Ning Shuyi's analysis does make a certain amount of sense." Dong Weifeng smiled, stopping himself from frightening Luo Wei further. He withdrew his gaze and nodded at Ning Shuyi. "During this period, whether it's railways, highways, or aviation, we've been keeping watch, and we truly haven't found any trace of either Chang Junchao or that burglar Li Wei.

"So it is very likely that they are still hiding in the shadows. While we are staking out the place, they are likely watching us as well."