Chapter 45 Reconnaissance
Rong Yuan silently waited for Jin Ling to finish crying. He could see that she was carrying too much pressure - the guilt of killing an unborn baby, the despair of being abandoned by her father, the fear of the future, the various pains she had endured in these days, etc. If she was not allowed to vent, it would be difficult for the conversation between them to proceed smoothly.
He knew that it would be difficult to overturn Jin Ling's case. Not only was it difficult because of the irrefutable evidence, but it was even more difficult because Jin Ling herself believed that it was her beating that caused the mistress's miscarriage, and she confessed to the crime in court.
Jin Ling cried for more than ten minutes before she gradually stopped. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she was obviously in much better spirits.
After she calmed down, Rong Yuan signaled her to pick up the phone again. Jin Ling said softly into the receiver, "Thank you, thank you for remembering me..." As she said this, tears slid down her cheeks again, but this time she didn't burst into tears, which made Rong Yuan feel relieved.
Rong Yuan said, "Jin Ling, I have a few questions for you now. Don't rush to answer. Think about it carefully first. Tell me the answer after you have thought it through."
While he was talking, the pea that had turned into an earphone was not idle either, operating the optical computer to fine-tune the peak frequency of the sound in the earpiece, so that the sound transmitted to Jin Ling's ears became Han Kuan's voice. Before coming, it collected Han Kuan's timbre materials from the Internet.
Seeing how cautious he was, Jin Ling, though confused, took his advice seriously and asked, "Okay. What do you want to ask?"
"Do you still remember why you went to find He Yanxu on the day of the incident?" Rong Yuan asked.
Jin Ling had probably gone through the scene of that day countless times in her mind. After a brief thought, she spoke clearly and logically: "Before that, she would post a few photos of me and my dad on Weibo every day to show off our affection, and her tone was as if she was my dad's legal wife. We didn't know it at first, but that day my mom received an email with a link to He Yanqiu's Weibo address. After my mom read it, she had a big fight with my dad, and my dad slapped my mom. I was so angry that I went to her to settle the score."
Rong Yuan also took a look at He Yanqiu's Weibo a few times. It was basically all about her sweet daily life. There were also many netizens who enviously liked and praised the post, saying "the couple is so loving."
Rong Yuan asked again: "How do you know where her home is? There is no home address on her Weibo ."
"They brought it out when they were arguing." Jin Ling said, "The background of several photos is a lakeside villa that my father bought two years ago. My mother also knows about the villa. My father always told my mother that he bought it to rent to clients for business negotiations."
"Then what? You went to the villa to find her?" Rong Yuan asked.
"Yeah. But I couldn't find her at first. I knocked on the door for a long time but no one answered, so I wanted to go back. Unexpectedly, when I was leaving, I ran into her coming back from outside, and then we had a quarrel."
Jin Ling recalled carefully for a while, but she had said a lot at the time and it was not easy to recall everything.
Rong Yuan was not interested in what they said specifically. The human brain uses imagery and imagination to polish memories, and sometimes even makes up a story to make the person believe that the event had happened. Especially in conversations, people will unconsciously choose to process it into a form that is beneficial to them.
Rong Yuan asked, "When you fought, how did you hit her? Did you hit her stomach on purpose? How many times did you hit her?"
The police also asked these questions, and Jin Ling recalled them many times during this period, either forced or voluntarily. She said: "I slapped her, and she grabbed my hair and pulled it hard, scratching my face with her nails. I fought back desperately, but she pulled my head down at that time, and I didn't know where I hit her."
"Don't you know anything at all? I think if you hit her stomach, the feeling under your hand should be different." Rong Yuan asked again.
Jin Ling thought about it carefully for a while, shook her head and said, "I really can't remember. During the fight, she suddenly held her stomach and cried out in pain, then rolled on the ground. I was startled and ran away. When I got home, my parents were not at home, so I wanted to find someone to talk to, so I went to find my grandfather."
Rong Yuan leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. It was because her memory was so vague that it was difficult to find a breakthrough.
"Did you see her bleeding at that time?" Rong Yuan asked again.
“Should… should have.”
"If there is, there is. If there isn't, there isn't. What do you mean by 'should be'?" Rong Yuan said in a bad tone.
Jin Ling also felt wronged: "I can't remember clearly...but didn't I find her blood on the soles of my shoes?"
This is called inferring the process from the result. But if He Yanxu didn't bleed at the time, the bloodstain would be a suspicious point. Unfortunately, Jin Ling was too panicked at the time and could hardly provide any useful clues.
"One last question," Rong Yuan took a deep breath and asked without hope, "How long did you fight for? Do you remember?"
He thought Jin Ling would say "I don't know", but the girl on the other side said confidently: "About two or three minutes."
"Two or three minutes?" Rong Yuan's expression became serious. "Are you sure?"
"Sure." Jin Ling said, "I couldn't wait for her and decided to go back, so I looked at my watch. It was exactly 3:33. It took me about a minute to walk out and meet her. Then I ran out and saw a bus at the stop, so I got on it. After I got on the bus, I looked at the time on the screen on the front of the bus. It was exactly 3:40."
In other words, the time interval between the two times of looking at the watch was only seven minutes.
Rong Yuan frowned, recalling the time display on the surveillance video.
Jin Ling waited for a while, and seeing that he had no other questions, she asked cautiously, "What do you mean by asking these questions?"
Rong Yuan looked at her expression and knew that she was somewhat speculative, so he said bluntly: "I think this matter may not be your responsibility."
Jin Ling was stunned. Although she had guessed so, she still couldn't believe it when she heard it with her own ears.
"I have something else to investigate, so I'm leaving now." Rong Yuan left immediately after saying that, and immediately put down the phone and stood up. Jin Ling didn't expect him to be so straightforward, so she stood up and shouted, "Han Kuan!"
Normally, it should be difficult to hear without a microphone, but Wandou faithfully transmitted her shouting to Rong Yuan's ears. Rong Yuan turned around, looked at her frightened expression, then picked up the microphone and said slowly: "Don't worry, I will definitely prove your innocence."
His voice was so resolute and yet so gentle, as if he was willing to go through fire and water for her and pay any price.
Without any reason, Jin Ling believed that he could do it. She was willing to believe it.
The girl held the microphone and burst into tears.
Rong Yuan turned and left.
…
Rong Yuan stood at a turn near the lakeside villa and asked Wandou: "Is this the place in the video?"
"Yes." Pea gave a definite answer.
Rong Yuan looked up at the camera mounted on a tree at the corner of the street. The lens just included this area, but the coverage area was not very large. Except for the change of seasons, the surrounding scenery had not changed much from when Jin Ling and He Yanxu were fighting.
"It took me 57 seconds to walk from the main entrance of the villa to here. Based on Jin Ling's leg length and normal stride, it would have taken her 1 minute and 40 seconds to walk here. But she was angry at the time, so her speed should have increased. The time was around 1 minute and 20 seconds."
Just now in the detention center, the optical computer had scanned Jin Ling's physical data and also recorded her walking stride and speed.
"Then... probably at this location, she bumped into He Yanxu." Rong Yuan walked to a diamond-shaped stone brick and speculated on the situation at that time. "They had an argument, and Jin Ling slapped He Yanxu. When He Yanxu was dodging, she just happened to retreat into the range that the camera could record. What time was it?"
"Three thirty-five minutes and forty-three seconds," said Pea.
"Then she chased after him and hit He Yanxu several more times, all on her head and shoulders, without any direct contact with her abdomen."
Jin Ling's memory blurred the details of her attack. The video showed that she slapped He Yanxu more than once.
"Yes." These were all recorded clearly in the video. Although the body was sometimes blocked due to the angle, the specific movements and distance difference between the two people at that time could be deduced based on the human body mechanics.
"Then He Yanxu fought back. She grabbed Jin Ling's hair and dragged her. The two of them left the surveillance area together. The time at that time was..."
"Three thirty-seven minutes and forty-five seconds."
"That was two minutes and two seconds. During this period, the pregnant woman's belly was not directly attacked." Rong Yuan said, "Then two minutes and fifteen seconds later, Jin Ling caught the bus. During this period, she was just out of the surveillance range." He walked from this spot to the bus stop and measured the distance with his own stride length. "It was about 750 meters."
"748.3 meters." Pea gave the accurate measurement data.
"Pea, what is Jin Ling's best 100-meter race result in school?"
"Thirteen seconds and seven."
"That is to say, even if she ran over here at the speed of a 100-meter sprint, it would take her about 100 seconds." Rong Yuan quickly calculated, "Then after leaving the surveillance range, the time she and He Yanxu spent fighting was only 35 seconds at most - if Jin Ling didn't lie and the time on the bus was correct."
"The times on buses in City S are all calibrated online, so the possibility of error is close to zero." Wandou asked, "But is there any problem with this time?"
"It's just a guess."
Rong Yuan thought for a while and asked, "Wan Dou, if a pregnant woman is beaten and has a miscarriage, how long will it take for the blood to flow to the point where it wets someone's shoes?"
