Chapter 7 Chapter 2 Death in the Darkroom

"The deceased, Shen Zhaopeng, was thirty years old and was a photographer by profession." Chewing on the information given by the police, Li Daqi, the investigation team leader of the Shilin Branch, squatted beside the corpse, staring at the bleak body, and sighed.At about 10:30, he received a report from the patrolling police in the district that a homicide had occurred in the "Yangming Mansion", so he rushed here with his troops. When he came here, he found that the electric light at the scene of the crime was broken. His young assistant, Ke Jianjie, brought a light tube from nearby. Only now can the darkroom be brightened.

"Yangming Jue Mansion" is an old four-storey Chinese-shaped building, which looks crumbling in the dark; there is a landscaped garden in the hollow area of ​​the Chinese character, but the water in the pool has long since dried up, and the rocks that make up the rockery are also mottled; It's not that there are still people stationed in the management office on the side, it really makes people mistakenly think that this place is in ruins. The crime scene is located in the bottom room of the right wing of the font; the layout of the apartment is that the left and right wings of the building are divided into two areas, with three households in each area, that is to say, there are about twelve households on each floor.

The corpse of Shen Zhaopeng lying prone on the floor is limp, with sticky blood stains spreading from the center of his back; he is wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans, with black blood stains on his head, and his corpse is lying in a dark room. It is from the dark world, and the murderer is the death in black. Li Daqi cared most about the dead man's fingers.The deceased's left hand was pressed under the side of the abdomen, and the right hand was bent and spread out on the floor, with the index finger raised up and the other four fingers bent inward.The index finger was stained with blood, and the following words were written in a crooked font on the floor next to it:

"SOI..." Li Daqi frowned in confusion, and slowly stood up; resting his chin on his left hand, he looked around the scene. This is a standard darkroom for a professional photographer, with all the necessary equipment; in front of the wall on the right hand side of the door is the workbench, on which are the necessary items for darkroom work: developing tank, wiping clip, film clip, scissors, Funnels, thermometers, magnifying machines, shallow pans, measuring cups, water pipe connectors, pliers, medicine mixers, timers, heating rods... Several rows of black and white photos were fixed with clips on the countertop like clothes to dry, more than half of them were The photos seemed to be swept away by a hurricane and scattered on the floor; a small refrigerator was placed in the corner where the bottom of the workbench was connected to the other wall, and some film was probably stored in it, and a stereo was placed under the workbench.Li Daqi noticed that the room was also equipped with air conditioning.

Judging from the location of this room, there should have been a window on the wall of the workbench, but due to the construction of a shelf for placing items, all of them were sealed. A large mirror hung on the wall to the left of the door, occupying almost a third of the wall, and he couldn't figure out why such a large mirror was placed in the darkroom. In front of the wall facing the door stood a silver-copper cabinet, inside which were stacked a large row of file folders, as well as stored films, etc., but many items were scattered on the ground, and the doors of the cabinet were left and right. The file folder leans askew against the cabinet door, exposing the negatives inside.The whole looks like it was swept by a typhoon.

If the cabinet was swept by a typhoon, then the whole darkroom was hit by a tornado. The items on the workbench were scattered all over the floor, lying around the corpse. Not only was the workbench messy, but an unknown liquid was also flowing on the floor, plus a pile of fragments of instruments and tools.A shattered security lamp fell at the feet of the dead man, already lifeless. Shen Zhaopeng is lying prone on the floor, with his head facing the direction of the workbench, and the right side of his body is facing the door; his left cheek is on the ground, his chin is pointing to his right hand bent upward; his left hand is folded and pressed under his left abdomen, forming a Slightly raised; his right hand lies flat, with a stiff index finger.The overall posture of the whole body is a bit like a prone Statue of Liberty, or a crushed puppet doll.

The most chilling thing was Shen Zhaopeng's expression.His right cheek is looking up obliquely, while the left cheek seems to be sinking into the ground; his eyes are wide open like a gong, and there is an indescribable eagerness and emptiness in his eyes; he seems to be suffocating, trying desperately to convey some information, but in vain .There was a hole in his back, covered with red-black liquid; the seemingly stiff right finger was also covered with the same color substance. Blood. Near the floor near the dead man's head dropped a still-on penlight, which may have been dropped by Shen Zhaopeng's girlfriend when he found the body; other than that, there were photo developing equipment scattered on the floor.

Without hindering the forensics personnel from taking evidence, Li Daqi walked to the workbench, frowning and studying the rows of photos in the air.It looked like several of them had been ripped off and left on the floor, but the contents of the few intact ones made his frown deepen. One of them was shot in a bedroom, possibly a hotel room; two men and women were smiling and sitting side by side on the floor; the face of a long-haired woman suddenly appeared on the TV screen behind them!The TV was apparently off as the power light below the screen was not on.The woman's expression appears to be smiling.

Another photo that caught his attention, presumably the background should be in an amusement park, the same young man and woman sitting behind a transparent round table, leaning close together, smiling at the camera.There are two drinks on the table. The woman's right hand is holding a string with a balloon tied to it, and a man's face appears on the balloon, showing a smile. "Sir, that young lady is awake." The young assistant Ke Jianjie's voice came from behind, Li Daqi's body trembled and shivered.Turning around and seeing the other party looking at him with a little surprise, the captain of the investigation waved his hand and said, "It's okay, let's go." Without waiting for the assistant to answer, he walked towards the door.

Out of the darkroom, turn right, walk along the corridor to the end and you will find the living room; a forensic officer is searching for suspicious evidence on the floor along the way. living room. Sitting on a wooden bench was a haggard-looking woman in a gray sweater; her long hair hung loose on her shoulders, her eyes were extremely dark circles, her cheeks were stained with tears, and her makeup was gone.She put her hands on her knees, pulled a pink handkerchief with a butterfly pattern on it, and bowed her head slightly without saying a word.The fat middle-aged administrator and the young policeman stood on both sides of the woman, and the former looked terrified.

Li Daqi pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the woman; Ke Jianjie handed her a pack of tissues.There were already several pieces of tissue paper lying on the table, as well as a plastic bag with the smell of chicken chops wafting from it. "Miss Jiang, right? I'm a police officer. I feel very sorry about this matter. I know it's not a good time to ask questions, but if the case can be clarified as soon as possible, the murderer can be caught one day earlier, so I hope you can talk to me. We cooperate. Can you answer the question now?" The woman raised her head, both eyes were red, with black eye circles, it was a dilapidated scene. She nodded, rubbing her eyes with a handkerchief. "When was the last time you saw Shen Zhaopeng?" "This morning, around seven o'clock." Her voice was quite weak, but still meticulous, "He went out to work, and I helped him prepare breakfast before going back to sleep." "Where do you go to work?" "The 'Third Eye' photo studio on Zhongzheng Road, which I opened with my friends." "The third eye?" Li Daqi wondered if he heard it wrong. "He likes the supernatural side of things." "No wonder, I found some strange photos in the darkroom." "He collects that kind of photo everywhere, sometimes he does it himself, and then publishes it on the website." "What website?" "A ghost photo website he opened." The woman's expression became darker. "So that's how it is," Li Daqi pondered for a while, "Maybe I will trouble you to give me the website address... come back to the case first. After Shen Zhaopeng left here, have you been staying?" "I went out for lunch at twelve o'clock, and stayed in the restaurant until nearly three o'clock before going to work." "Are you doing..." "Hair stylist, 'Magic Hair Studio' on Xiaobei Street." "Well, what about after get off work?" "I got off work at 9:20, packed my things, rode back to the mountain and arrived here at about ten o'clock. I went directly to the second floor, and when I entered the living room, I found that the window of the restaurant was open." "Wait, is the living room light on?" "That's right, it's on. No matter who's home at night between the two of us, the living room light must be on." "The window of the restaurant..." Li Daqi turned his head to look at the window. The investigators he assigned just now had been collecting evidence by the window, hoping to find useful fingerprints or footprints. "What next?" Li Daqi turned his gaze back to Miss Jiang. "Although I was very scared, I still braved up and searched along the corridor. I thought that some gangsters had broken in, but I didn't know where he was hiding..." She suddenly choked up and covered her mouth with a handkerchief. Hold your nose, "Later, I found out in the darkroom..." Two or three pieces of tissues were pulled out, and it was obvious that the other party was on the verge of collapse again.Li Daqi had no choice but to give up asking for the time being, turned to the administrator and asked, "You said you saw this young lady coming downstairs after ten o'clock?" "Yes, yes," the administrator said anxiously with a pale face. "After she got out of the elevator, she stumbled all the way and finally fell to the ground. I hurried over to help her and asked what happened. She said that her boyfriend was on the second floor. Lou was killed. I was shocked and was hesitating whether to go up to have a look, when this patrolman just passed by..." The young police officer on the side nodded and added that after hearing the administrator's narration, he immediately went upstairs to confirm and found the body, and then quickly notified the branch office. Li Daqi nodded.He wanted to ask Miss Jiang if she brought a flashlight into the darkroom, but the other party's situation prevented him from asking.In fact, the answer should be affirmative; the penlight that fell next to the corpse was something Ms. Jiang brought in and left at the scene; she must have been shocked when she saw the corpse with the flashlight, dropped the flashlight on the ground, and stumbled basement. He stood up, glanced at Ke Jianjie, and said, "There are still many things to be confirmed. I will ask Miss Jiang to see if there are any missing items in the room, and to listen to the preliminary autopsy and forensic report..." He was thoughtful Staring intently at the window of the restaurant, "I checked just now, there is a fire escape outside the window, and the window is open again...the murderer must have come in and out from there." Li Daqi turned to the administrator, "Did you find out during your shift tonight?" Suspicious person?" The other party shook his head desperately, "Absolutely not! If there is, I have already said that the people who come and go are all tenants who live here. If you want to know more details, you can watch the surveillance video." "Well, since the murderer entered and exited through the fire escape, the information that the video tape can give may not be helpful, but I will take a look at it later." Afterwards, Li Daqi tightly closed his lips, and looked around the living room again seriously. No murder weapon was seen at the scene, so he should have been taken away... But what bothered him more was... Li Daqi looked at the sobbing Miss Jiang, and Shen Zhaopeng's bloody right index finger and the mysterious words left by him before his death emerged in his mind.