After returning to their hometowns, they each found new jobs in the city, but the wages in the small cities of Shandong were very low. Zhang Yong 'an originally thought that earning 20,000 in two years would be very little, but after working in his hometown, he found that the work here was even harder and he might not even earn 20,000.
That day, Zhang Yong 'an bought wine and food and invited Wang Jianghui over. The two, full of resentment, decided to return to Guangdong to get back "their own money".
Their plan was not complicated. They had prepared ropes and sealing tape in advance, and each had a newly bought sheathed long knife. When no one was at home, they would find a way to open the door and hide. When Chen Xinhua and his wife came back from their lectures, they would control them and force them to hand over their bank passwords.
Zhang Yong 'an and Wang Jianghui put on the headsets they had prepared in advance and waited until after seven o 'clock in the evening, when the couple entered the master bedroom, they rushed in with knives.
Chen and his wife did not dare to resist at all. Their hands and feet were tied up. Zhang Yong 'an first pierced the woman's belly with a knife to force out the code, and then sealed the woman's mouth with tape. He went to another room and stabbed a man who wouldn't speak with a knife and got the same code.
The couple said the same password, and Wang Jianghui began to urge him to leave, but Zhang Yong 'an always felt that Chen Xinhua recognized him.
With a sharp weapon in hand, he went into two rooms one after another and killed the couple.
Even so, Zhang Yong 'an felt insecure. He asked Wang Jianghui to stab the couple in the neck a few times before he began to plunder with peace of mind.
There was only over two thousand yuan in cash in the house, but there were four mobile phones and a few pieces of gold jewelry. Zhang Yong 'an knew that the big head was still in the bank card, but he forgot that the ATM could only withdraw a maximum of 20,000 cash a day.
After returning to their hometown, the two agreed to avoid the storm for a while, but Zhang Yong 'an couldn't hold back any longer and withdrew another 20,000 yuan in cash from the ATM near their residence.
It was this withdrawal that exposed Zhang Yong 'an's whereabouts. When the Major case team caught him in the rental house, they found cash and bank cards under his pillow. The few text messages he sent to Wang Jianghui on his phone had not yet been deleted.
The investigators used Zhang Yong 'an's phone to easily summon Wang Jianghui out and capture him in one go.
The case was solved, and the result was beyond everyone's expectations. Originally, most of the members of the Major Case unit guessed the same as I did, that it was a revenge case - but the murderer's confession made it very clear that at the beginning they were just for money, and at the end they decided to kill the victim on a whim.
As a novice, I dare say I gained a lot from this case, such as seeing a corner of the limitations of police detectives and forensic experts.
But I was only confused about the two murderers.
To make a fortune, to get rich overnight, to treat other people's lives as worthless, I watched the process of them committing the crime, and it always felt a bit unreal.
I tried to repeat in my mind the words that Yan Ge comforted me: "It's not strange for a person to make any choice in despair of life."
But are the two really desperate?
They were both victims who joined the gang because they were cheated, but they were willing to be accomplices because of their dream of getting rich and ended up as murderers. Could there really be no chance to turn back along the way? No, Duan Jiang, who was also trapped in pyramid schemes and had no money at all, didn't even think of killing for revenge when he hurt his foot.
And I was more like a fish that didn't bite the hook, just creating a ripple.
Never despair, it's a choice.
I haven't told Lili that I was tricked into the pyramid scheme until now.
But she often teased me, saying I was a man lacking warmth and love, and I simply couldn't refute that.
Since I can remember, my parents have been working and doing business in other places, and I have always lived with my grandmother, and that's why she favored me.
I don't know much about this old lady. All I know is that she went through 1949 when the Kuomintang was defeated and many rich people fled to Taiwan. She worked as a servant in a rich family where the male head was an engineer and the female head was very kind to my grandmother and wanted to take her along.
Grandma said no. She was allocated three mu of land in her hometown. She believes that a person needs land to have a future, and so does a country.
Later, because of her experience as a servant, grandma became the most knowledgeable old lady in the village. She not only smoked but also blew smoke rings, which she said was more "fashionable". I sat with her in a chair since I was a child, feeling the white, fragrant smoke around her. Quiet and peaceful.
The other old ladies in the village could not speak a few words clearly, but in grandma's smoke there was a basketful of life lessons. She told me during the time when my father's business was at its best and he was buying a car: "Your father is just pretending to be shrewd, like a monkey picking corn, picking one and throwing it away, unreliable, you have no choice but to study hard."
She also loved to speak ill of her grandfather, saying that he preferred his cousin because she carried it lightly, and that I carried it as heavily as a weight.
She was willing to carry me on her back and walk a long way to the hospital: The road of life, it's okay to be a bit heavy, but at worst, you can carry me along.
In many desperate situations, I was thousands of miles away from home, but I could always recall my grandma's words in the smoke.
I remember my nausea in the face of blood and corpses. But this is part of the rest of my life, and I have to accept it.
My parents seldom called me again. It was many years later that my mother told me that my father had thought of death more than once when he was selling the car. It was my mother who scolded him harshly. At worst, he would sell everything at home and go to Guangdong to work with my son. My son was already doing an internship and was about to become a police officer.
To die at this time, the father's debt is repaid by the son, and not repaying the money would ruin the son's reputation, that would be a real burden.
Father did not run away from his burden, he did not drink that bottle of loquat.
This case, these household affairs, is just the starting point of my forensic career, a bit heavy, but it doesn't matter, I'll go on slowly.
No despair, I'm chosen. This is the line that touched me the most in the story.
I went to Guangdong last year and talked to Xiaodao about his experience. He knew I loved coffee and found a coffee shop that had been renovated from an old factory area.
Perhaps because the coffee was so good, there were no seats left when I went there, and as I was about to leave, something outside the window caught my attention --
It was a huge factory chimney, with a crack in the original cement-covered shell where bougainvillea had grown.
It's doing well in a desperate situation where it shouldn't be.
Another small thing is that Lili in this story once worked in a factory in Guangdong as well.
She said the most desperate conversation she had ever heard was about the female workers in the factory plugging in a few cents' worth of circuit boards, and whether hundreds of them could be exchanged for a brick to send home to their parents to build a house.
Then the money they earn can be used as their dowry.
She thought the workers were too hard, and after a few years she found out that one of the workers was not married but had started her own factory.
"I don't know how she did it."
That's also why I like Guangdong, where I've seen very vigorous plants and people.
(End of this post)