Chapter 844 - 842: For the Deceased Her 12

Of course, Tan Ying herself has this personality. According to the information they’ve gathered, Tan Ying is quite adept at quarreling in the village; few dare provoke her.

She even raised her chin proudly: "Officer Zhao, our family is different from others. We don’t prefer sons over daughters. What’s the problem with that? What era is this, and you’re still stuck on that outdated notion?"

Zhao Kehan’s expression cracked a bit; clearly, Tan Ying is a bit difficult to deal with, although she didn’t even graduate from elementary school. She’s very good at meddling and dodging questions.

Tan Ying indeed never showed any favoritism towards sons over daughters; it’s her recent behavior that has led to this misunderstanding.

"After Su Chen died, why did you only think about compensation? Once you received it, you no longer cared about Su Chen’s death?" Zhao Kehan asked, "Your various behaviors don’t seem like those of a loving mother. But according to information from your hometown, you and your husband treated Su Chen well."

"Everything you’ve done seems like a smokescreen." He stared closely at Tan Ying’s face, trying to find something amiss.

Still, nothing.

Tan Ying laughed: "Su Chen is my daughter. Who else would we treat well if not her? Officer Zhao, isn’t this nonsense? Who says you must neglect your daughter? Does being kind to her conflict with accepting benefits?"

"Answer my question properly." Zhao Kehan felt deeply troubled.

Tan Ying sat up a bit straighter and said, "My daughter is really gone now; she committed suicide. No matter how sad it is, what can be done? Can the result be changed? The deceased disappear from this world, and the living must continue; we can’t be forever immersed in grief."

"My husband and I have a son; life must go on. We can’t stop living just because someone has died."

"We’ve raised that dead girl for nearly twenty years, and when she died, we had nothing. Isn’t it natural for us to demand some compensation from the school responsible for overseeing her? If we don’t fight for it, wouldn’t she have died for nothing?"

She died cleanly, leaving our whole family behind.

Officer Zhao, unless a person dies of sickness at home and the cause is entirely their own, many places would offer compensation otherwise, right? For instance, if someone was walking down the street and got killed by a falling tree, they could seek compensation from the road administration, couldn’t they? Our daughter died at school; the school had responsibility for supervision, so compensating us is reasonable."

Faced with Zhao Kehan’s still suspicious eyes, Tan Ying said, "Officer Zhao, I really didn’t kill anyone. If there isn’t substantive evidence, just release me. You keep bringing me to the station for questioning intermittently; it’s really affecting my work."

Tan Ying gritted her teeth and said, "If the school stops hiring me, you’ll have to compensate!"

Zhao Kehan took a deep breath and brought out a transparent bag: "Do you know what this is?"

"What is it?" Tan Ying asked, looking indifferent.

"It’s the fibers from your clothes. Do you know where they were found?" Zhao Kehan asked again, capturing the flash of surprise and regret in Tan Ying’s eyes.

Tan Ying maintained her calm expression: "Where were they discovered?"

"On the rooftop where Jiang Yizhou fell, not at the edge, but at the entrance. That’s the male dormitory; your clothing fibers shouldn’t be found there. How do you explain that now?" Zhao Kehan’s voice was sharp, "Your dormitory’s removable window frame, the surveillance blind spots, many seemingly decorative malfunctioning cameras, and your husband Su Youcheng, who works as a security guard at the school."

"Once you connect these, it’s not hard to deduce certain things."

"Of course, the most crucial thing is, you shouldn’t have been on the rooftop of dormitory building number 4."

"You killed Jiang Yizhou, and your husband was an accomplice, right? You demanded compensation from the school, but it was just a cover to infiltrate and kill."

"Not just Jiang Yizhou; Liang Cheng, Zhou Jiayang also died by your hands, didn’t they?"

Tan Ying shouted her denial: "Officer, your speculations are very good, but you can’t rely on speculation to catch the murderer. Don’t falsely accuse good people; I had an alibi at the time and had no chance to commit a crime. When Jiang Yizhou died, Sun Ling, dressed inappropriately, had just returned, and I was arguing with her for quite a while. When Liang Cheng died, people from her dorm were asking me for the dormitory key. When Zhou Jiayang died, I wasn’t even on campus."

"You still have your husband, Su Youcheng, don’t you? You’ve forgotten; I said he was your accomplice," Zhao Kehan stated firmly, noticing Tan Ying’s changed expression, but it wasn’t panic. This made him frown; could it be that she felt her great revenge had been achieved, and now she’s fearless?

He had dealt with suspects committing crimes for revenge on behalf of family members, and once their goal was achieved, indeed, they feared nothing.

However, compared to those people, Tan Ying still felt somewhat different.

"When Jiang Yizhou died, I checked the surveillance outside the dormitory; Sun Ling was indeed knocking on the door outside for several minutes, but you were only answering from within and didn’t appear at all. Only after Jiang Yizhou fell did you come out from inside."

"If you had prepared a recorder in the dorm beforehand, with the argument you had with Sun Ling each time needing a certain amount of time, she was accustomed to it and wouldn’t seek help from anyone else. You could have pushed someone off the building and come back within that timeframe. There were few people at that time, and it was dark; visibility was low."

"This also explains why the window frame could be removed. Your husband Su Youcheng, as a security guard, could easily have identified which surveillance were blind spots, which ones were unusable, and could even create some incidents to assist you. Using surveillance blind spots and those cameras that were more like decorations for being broken, you could have reached dormitory building number 4 and had plenty of time to commit the crime."

"We’ve already brought Sun Ling over, asking her to confirm whether she heard a recording that day or if it was you speaking directly from the dorm."

"Tan Ying, our investigation found that you purchased a recorder a month ago in another district of Ning City. We discovered this recorder under your dorm bed, and our technicians have already restored it. Perhaps you didn’t foresee us thinking about this, so you dared to leave the recorder under the bed."

Seeing Tan Ying fall into silence, tightly clasping her hands, Zhao Kehan felt slightly relieved.

As for Liang Cheng and Zhou Jiayang’s deaths, Tan Ying indeed had no time to commit the crime, but Su Youcheng’s alibi was already overturned.

Additionally, under Su Youcheng’s bed, they found hemp ropes, identical to those used to bind Liang Cheng, Zhou Jiayang, and Mu Shiming.

After investigation, they even found the shop selling the hemp ropes, a small, inconspicuous store in a different district in Ning City.

"You killed Mu Shiming as well, didn’t you? When Liang Cheng died, you left the campus, actually going to where Mu Shiming works to scout out the place under the guise of looking for a cleaning job. We’ve already obtained surveillance footage of you appearing there; this time before Zhou Jiayang died, a figure resembling you appeared there again, albeit with some disguise as a cleaner," Zhao Kehan continued.

"Were you resenting Jiang Yizhou for remaining silent as her boyfriend, thus seeking revenge on them?"

Seeing Tan Ying suddenly raise her head as if to argue something, Zhao Kehan didn’t wait for her to speak, opening before she could: "In fact, it’s more than just that, isn’t it?"