Chapter 975: Tracing the Origin of the Nightgown

On Lu Chuan’s side, it wasn’t that he had any concrete leads yet, but something just felt off.

When Zhang Mengyao left the school that day, nothing out of the ordinary happened. From what they knew now, as an art teacher she usually had no classes in the afternoon, so it was perfectly normal for teachers of elective subjects to leave early.

When Zhang Mengyao left the school, she’d been wearing her work clothes, but when her body was found, she was wearing a camisole nightdress.

"From what I saw in the case file about Zhang Mengyao’s living situation, she lived alone?"

Zhang Hui nodded; that was indeed the case.

In Haizhou City, Zhang Mengyao lived alone, and it wasn’t a rental—the place was an apartment her parents had bought for her.

"What’s the situation with the apartment now?"

Lu Chuan had just taken over the case, so he wasn’t clear on many of the investigative details yet, but Zhang Hui had already been studying it for a whole week. Zhang Hui had definitely gone into Zhang Mengyao’s residence to investigate and was very familiar with the situation there.

Sure enough, Zhang Hui didn’t even need to think before he started describing the place.

After Zhang Mengyao went missing, her parents and the school both filed police reports.

But all these years there had been no news whatsoever. Zhang Mengyao was their only daughter, so they’d basically left everything in the apartment untouched, always hoping that one day their daughter would come back.

After hearing this, Lu Chuan asked Zhang Hui to take him over to the apartment; he wanted to verify something.

Zhang Mengyao’s apartment was a bit of a distance from Youyi Garden; it took them almost forty minutes by car to get there.

When they opened the door, what they saw was completely opposite from the dilapidation Lu Chuan had imagined: the place was very clean, you could even say spotless.

The whole room was decorated in pink tones, and there was a panda plush sitting at the head of the bed.

"Zhang Mengyao’s parents come every week to clean this apartment, so even though fifteen years have passed, it still looks just like someone is living here."

Lu Chuan let out a sigh.

Parents’ hearts are universally pitiable—their children are like pieces of their own flesh. She’d been missing for five years, and now they’d finally found her body, but the killer was still unknown. You could imagine how devastating this was for the two elderly parents.

But the dead can’t be brought back to life. All Lu Chuan could do now was try his best to catch the murderer from back then.

Since the apartment had been cleaned, there wasn’t much point in treating it as a crime scene. To test his theory, Lu Chuan went straight to the bedroom.

The apartment wasn’t big, just over eighty square meters, laid out as two bedrooms and two living areas.

He pulled open the wardrobe in the master bedroom; inside were all the clothes Zhang Mengyao used to wear.

Before going through the clothes, Lu Chuan put on gloves.

The victim was a young woman; as a police officer, Lu Chuan was determined to show her the respect she deserved.

Lu Chuan focused on examining the types, brands, and styles of Zhang Mengyao’s clothes.

"Lu Chuan, did you find something?"

This apartment had been cleaned many times by Zhang Mengyao’s parents.

When she first went missing, the place had undergone a fairly detailed inspection, but not many clues were found.

Now that it had been confirmed that Zhang Mengyao had been killed, this apartment was potentially one of the crime scenes. But five years had passed, and with her parents coming every week to clean, any traces would likely have long since vanished.

Lu Chuan nodded. Zhang Hui was right; he had indeed noticed something.

"Zhang Mengyao was someone who liked cleanliness and order. Look—her clothes are stored in different compartments by season, and some are hung while others are neatly folded and placed below."

He had noticed this as soon as he opened the wardrobe—the victim had good living habits.

And he believed her parents hadn’t really moved these clothes around.

When they came every week, they only cleaned the rooms. Even if they did move something, they would have put it back exactly as it was.

For Lu Chuan’s purposes this detail didn’t really matter; what he wanted was to use the style, type, and brand of these clothes to infer something.

Lu Chuan took out several pieces of intimate clothing and laid them on the bed.

"Brother Hui, look—these are all Zhang Mengyao’s underwear. There’s a particular preference here."

Zhang Hui wasn’t especially knowledgeable in this area, but looking at the garments laid out on the bed, he also noticed one common feature.

Though the styles and brands differed, all of Zhang Mengyao’s pieces had one thing in common: every item had lace trim.

"You mean this lace?"

"Yeah."

What Lu Chuan was pointing out was exactly that lace.

"Not only that, I found six nightdresses in her wardrobe, all of them camisoles."

He took those pieces out as well and spread them on the bed where they could be clearly seen.

The camisole nightdresses were all different in color and style, but each one had lace.

"Look at these colors—there’s purple, white, yellow, pink, green, and one black one. But there’s one color missing: red."

The six camisole nightdresses all differed in color and style, yet shared the same feature: they all had lace trim.

Lu Chuan continued, "Is it that Zhang Mengyao doesn’t like red?"

Normally, a woman’s wardrobe would include at least one or two red items. They wouldn’t have to be bright red; they could be pink or light red, but there should be some.

Yet among Zhang Mengyao’s nightdresses, the one color conspicuously absent was red.

In answer to Lu Chuan’s question, Zhang Hui shook his head. Pointing at the wardrobe, he said, "I don’t think so. Look at some of her outerwear and shirts and sweaters—there are red ones. So it’s impossible she doesn’t like red."

"So if Zhang Mengyao doesn’t dislike red, how come there’s no red nightdress among these six?"

This question...

Maybe at the time she just hadn’t bought a red lace nightdress—that was possible too.

There wasn’t necessarily a set answer to this.

But Zhang Hui suddenly thought of the camisole nightdress that had been found on the body.

He understood what Lu Chuan was getting at. That camisole nightdress had partially rotted away, but Zhang Hui had looked at it, and not casually—he’d examined it closely.

"You’re suspecting that the lace nightdress Zhang Mengyao was wearing when she was killed was her own?"

Lu Chuan nodded firmly.

"When I was in the office just now looking at that nightdress in the photos, because so much time has passed it’s hard to tell its original color. But if it wasn’t red, it was probably black."

Of course, if they wanted to determine this, it wouldn’t be hard. They could clean it to see the original color, or run some tests to confirm it. That wouldn’t be a major problem.

What Lu Chuan was wrestling with was this: if the lace nightdress Zhang Mengyao was wearing when she was killed was her own, then where exactly was the scene of the murder?