S.C.I. (Volume I) - Case 1: Chapter 14

The Digital Killer 14: Li Feifan

Before long, several police cars pulled up in front of University C's psychology department building, and Gongsun and the others hurriedly got out. Officers set up yellow police tape around the corpse, while campus security dispersed the spectating students. The entire scene was orderly, but the campus itself was in absolute uproar.

A student like Li Feifan was a textbook honor student. For someone like him to fall to his death in broad daylight under everyone's watchful eyes, the university administration could hardly escape the blame. Furthermore, after a preliminary investigation of the scene, the police had determined that the nature of the case was murder. At this point, panic spread throughout the entire school.

The university administration immediately ordered all classes to be suspended for the day to fully cooperate with the police investigation.

The officers of S.C.I. split into several groups to begin their work. Wang Chao took some technicians to the rooftop to collect samples; Zhang Long and Xu Qing went together to question Li Feifan's classmates; Ma Han headed to Li Feifan's dormitory; and Gongsun and Zhao Hu conducted the on-site autopsy and questioned eyewitnesses.

Meanwhile, Bai Yutang pulled Zhan Zhao into the S.C.I.'s mobile command RV, where the two sat facing each other.

"What is it?" Zhan Zhao asked, looking at the grim-faced Bai Yutang across from him.

"Are you feeling any better?"

"I'm fine." Zhan Zhao turned his face away and muttered under his breath.

"So, what exactly was your relationship with that Li Feifan?" Bai Yutang asked with a playful grin.

"What did you say?!" Zhan Zhao instantly bristled, jumping up from his seat.

"Can you not puff up your fur first?" Bai Yutang quickly reached out and pulled Zhan Zhao back down into his chair. "I'm asking you how much you know about him. Do you have any specific impressions of him, or did he ever say anything particular to you?"

Zhan Zhao frowned and racked his brain to recall. "Nothing out of the ordinary. I only know his grades were excellent, he attended every single one of my guest lectures, and he often asked me questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"They were all purely academic, nothing special..."

"Do you know when this photo was taken?" Bai Yutang asked, holding up the cell phone.

Zhan Zhao shook his head in frustration. "I don't have the slightest memory of it."

"What about the numbers 1, 3, 5?"

Zhan Zhao let out a sigh. "I don't understand them."

Bai Yutang also sighed. "I'm telling you, Cat, looking at how this kid jumped off a building clutching a phone that has your photo on it, it almost looks like he died for love."

Hearing this, Zhan Zhao's eyes went completely round. "Bai Mouse! Now is not the time to be making jokes."

"Haha..." Bai Yutang extended a finger and gently rubbed the space between Zhan Zhao's brows, saying, "I just wanted you to relax a bit, don't be so tense."

After hearing this, Zhan Zhao rolled his eyes at him and leaned back against his chair. "This time we truly don't have a single clue. But... I feel as though he was trying to tell me something..."

Di-di-di-di...

Bai Yutang's phone suddenly rang. He picked it up, and Ma Han's voice came through.

"Boss, we found some things in Li Feifan's dorm. You'd better come take a look quickly."

"What did you find?" Bai Yutang could hear that Ma Han's voice sounded extremely anxious.

"...It's hard to explain over the phone. You'll know when you see it. Oh, and have Doctor Zhan come along too."

Hanging up the phone, Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao headed over immediately.

Li Feifan lived in the graduate dormitory building in the school's eastern campus. Because of his outstanding academic performance, the university had specially rewarded him with a relatively luxurious single-occupancy studio dorm. It was a newly constructed building with complete amenities and decent interior decoration. Li Feifan lived on the third floor, in the first room on the eastern side, Room 301.

Stepping into his dorm room, the very first impression it gave was one of extreme cleanliness. Even though several officers were already inside collecting evidence, the bright windows, spotless floor, and orderly bookshelves made it look as clean as a hotel room rather than the dormitory of a young, single male student.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao walked into the bedroom and saw Ma Han squatting by the bed. On the mattress lay over a dozen exceptionally thick photo albums.

Seeing the two enter, Ma Han stood up, holding an exquisite, colored paper box in his hands.

"Take a look at these first." As he spoke, he handed the photo albums to Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao.

The two opened them with suspicion, only to be instantly dumbfounded. The albums were completely filled with photographs of Zhan Zhao, each one carefully labeled with a date. There was a photo for almost every single day, spanning a dozen albums and thousands of pictures, covering a period of nearly a year.

Bai Yutang flipped through a few pages before tossing the album aside, cursing, "Damn it, a psychological deviant."

Zhan Zhao's heart also leaped with dread as he flipped through them. "He... he was stalking me?"

"And he followed you for a whole year!" Bai Yutang patted Zhan Zhao's shoulder helplessly. "Cat, you're really something! Someone stalked you for a year and you didn't notice a thing?"

Zhan Zhao glared at him, while Ma Han smiled from the side and said, "It's actually not that surprising! These were taken from a very long distance. An ordinary person wouldn't be able to notice."

"Oh? How can you tell?" Bai Yutang asked, puzzled.

Ma Han scratched his head. "When I was in the Special Duties Unit, I received training in this area. Look at these photos; the foreground in some of them is extremely blurry, which indicates they were taken after zooming in from afar with a high-magnification zoom camera." He pulled out a few pictures and pointed them out to Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao. "They were taken from at least a hundred meters away. What's even stranger is that this kid used shooting angles for all of them."

"Shooting angles?"

"Because the distance is very far, if an ordinary person snaps a photo from a distance, they don't know how to alter their angle subtly. So, mostly they just capture whatever is in frame! However, if someone intends to shoot a target, they have to alter their angles to select the absolute best sniper point." As he spoke, he pointed to his own forehead, "Here," and then to his heart, "Here."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang examined the photographs carefully, and to their astonishment, they found that every single photo indeed featured at least one sniper target point.

A bit shaken, Bai Yutang asked Ma Han, "Did this kid receive professional training?"

Ma Han nodded. "He probably didn't take these photos for the purpose of shooting, but once a habit is formed, it's very hard to break. I can guarantee he wasn't an amateur!"

"Good man!" Bai Yutang patted Ma Han's shoulder appreciatively. "This is a lead! You're the expert, so I'll leave this part of the investigation to you."

"Yes, sir!" Ma Han agreed somewhat bashfully, then opened the box in his hand and held it out. "There are also these!"

Zhan and Bai leaned in to look and found that these were also photographs. Zhan Zhao was in the frame as well, except he was not in the dead center of the shot. This was because the key position in these frames was occupied by a black Honda sedan.

"This car?" Zhan Zhao looked toward Bai Yutang.

Bai Yutang nodded. "That's right, it's that exact one!" He looked at the photographs again, deep in thought. "Cat, your student was trying to tell you something! He wanted to tell you that you are in danger."

...!...

Zhan Zhao took the photographs. The car in the pictures had been circled with a red pen. Clearly, while Li Feifan was secretly following and photographing him, he had discovered the existence of this car.

Bai Yutang put the photographs back into the box and said, "Take all of these back and have Jiang Ping run a technical analysis on them to see if we can find any leads."

"No wonder he was staring at you so vigilantly earlier." Bai Yutang shrugged. "He must have been worried that you were in danger."

"Why do you think he went up to the rooftop alone?" Zhan Zhao suddenly turned his face to look at Bai Yutang.

...

Bai Yutang remained silent.

Zhan Zhao let out a bitter smile and said, "He died for me.”