The deceased's room was certainly to be examined, perhaps some clues could be discovered from it.
The prison guards' dormitory had only two floors in total. However, due to the mountainous terrain of the city, the building appeared to be only six or seven meters high from the front. From the back, it was built right on the edge of a retaining wall, a full 8 meters above the ground.
Fan Yafu had leaped from the back, falling onto the cement ground below.
His room was the same as any other prison guard's, with identical furnishings and layout. Even the small decorations were uniformly provided by the unit.
No flaws were found, no anomalies detected.
"Does Fan Yafu have any family?" Hu Jia asked the accompanying personnel.
"His parents are alive, and he has a younger sister," the accompanying personnel replied.
Hu Jia stood before Fan Yafu's desk, lost in thought.
"What's wrong?" Li Qingqing approached Hu Jia.
"Have you seen his body?" Hu Jia asked.
Lü Qingqing nodded. By the time she arrived, the scene had already been cleared. Fan Yafu's body had been moved to a specialized room.
"I just confirmed his appearance; he is indeed one of the two individuals who accompanied the escort this morning."
"Let's go and take another look."
Hu Jia beckoned Lü Qingqing, and they left the prison guards' dormitory.
Along the way, Hu Jia inquired about the name of another guard and learned he was called Cai Yun.
Cai Yun had joined as a prison guard a year before Fan Yafu. After Yafu's incident, he had been summoned by the prison for questioning, likely to understand if Yafu had exhibited any recent abnormalities, as he was the one who completed the last task with Yafu.
Hu Jia planned to speak with Cai Yun later, hoping to uncover something from a different angle. After all, a person usually shows some deviation before committing suicide.
Standing before Fan Yafu's body, Hu Jia meticulously examined his wounds.
From the external examination, the body showed no noticeable livor mortis. There was a contusion on the right side of the top of his head, 5 centimeters long and 3 centimeters wide, with scattered punctate abrasions around it. There was a subgaleal hematoma on the occiput. A 1-centimeter laceration was found on the upper inner margin of the right auricle. There was a laceration on the left upper orbital ridge with irregular edges, extending to the periosteum. Numerous abrasions were present on the face, lips, neck, chest, and limbs. There was a skull fracture.
"Qingqing," Hu Jia called to her, "come and take a look."
Lü Qingqing's skills in forensic examination were clearly superior to Hu Jia's, and he trusted her conclusions more. In fact, as Hu Jia was examining the body so carefully, Lü Qingqing had already suspected that there was something unusual about the corpse.
Seeing Hu Jia move aside from the head examination area, Lü Qingqing leaned in.
After only a few glances, her composure turned to surprise. "This?"
Hu Jia nodded.
Lü Qingqing suddenly understood.
Hu Jia explained that he had already found something amiss in Fan Yafu's bedroom. If Fan Yafu had committed suicide, why would there be cash and deposit slips in his room?
Normally, someone committing suicide would have already dealt with their belongings beforehand, especially since Fan Yafu was not single.
Of course, this was just one suspicious point and did not definitively prove that Fan Yafu was murdered.
Therefore, he chose to examine Fan Yafu's body.
Indeed, here he found a suspicious point.
According to the principles of biomechanics, force decomposition, and transmission, the deceased had sustained head injuries and a skull fracture. Based on the characteristics of a fall from height, with the head hitting the ground without any intermediate buffering force and on a flat surface from a height of 8 meters, the body should have landed immediately after the head impact, or with a small degree of oscillation, and not have formed secondary injuries.
However, the deceased's head had three blunt force injuries caused by significant force, specifically subcutaneous bleeding with a skull fracture on the right top of the head, extensive subgaleal hematoma on the occiput, and an irregular laceration on the left upper orbital ridge.
These three injuries, inflicted from different directions, could not have formed during the fall without external force or buffering from obstacles during the fall.
This led to the inference that the head injuries were not sustained in a single event during the fall; thus, he had been injured before the fall.
Therefore, Fan Yafu had been attacked before his death.
Soon, Hu Jia interviewed several witnesses at the murder scene. From their testimonies, Hu Jia gathered a general understanding of the situation at the time of the incident.
Fan Yafu returned to his dormitory alone after lunch.
Around 1 PM, someone saw Fan Yafu standing on the roof. Everyone was shouting at him, but he never responded.
As everyone panicked, Fan Yafu took a few steps back. His figure was obscured by the concrete brick railing on the rooftop, and at the same time, everyone heard Fan Yafu shout, "Freedom."
Then, a thud was heard, and Fan Yafu fell from the back of the building.
Seeing that all testimonies were nearly identical, Hu Jia went to the front of the dormitory.
Looking up, the distance of two floors was only a little over 6 meters. If someone had indeed held Fan Yafu hostage on the rooftop, the people below would not have failed to see them.
Moreover, the crucial point was that Fan Yafu had not cried for help.
Hu Jia and Lü Qingqing went up to the dormitory roof. The crime scene had already been cleaned, but some residue was still visible, likely from a pile of ashes.
However, according to the prison guards, people sometimes drank, barbecued, and smoked meat on this roof, so ashes appearing here was not unusual.
Additionally, the parapet on the roof was entirely constructed of bricks, with no gaps. Yet, precisely because of this, some friction marks were seen on the edges of these parapets, likely caused by the body rubbing against the wall during the jump.
The place where the body fell also matched the position of a jump from a height. The ground showed signs of having been washed clean of blood, and there were no signs of struggle in Fan Yafu's dormitory, truly resembling a natural high-altitude suicide.
However, despite the killer's excellent disguise and arrangement of everything, the injuries on Fan Yafu's head betrayed him.
It was just that Hu Jia could not understand why everyone had seen Fan Yafu as committing suicide.
Just then, Cai Yun emerged.
Hu Jia immediately approached him and asked about Fan Yafu.
Clearly, Cai Yun was prepared for this, as he had already answered these questions.
Cai Yun said that Fan Yafu had seemed preoccupied lately. On their way to escort Zhang Hangjiang to the city bureau that morning, Fan Yafu had sighed incessantly.
When Cai Yun asked him what was wrong, Fan Yafu said he was troubled and felt that the world held no hope. Kuaishuge.
However, Cai Yun and Fan Yafu did not reach a level of complete openness, so he did not press further regarding what was troubling Fan Yafu.
"But on the way back, Fan Yafu asked me a question, asking if the family of someone in their line of work would receive a pension if they died."
Cai Yun's words essentially sealed the case as a suicide for Fan Yafu.
However, Hu Jia had other considerations. Perhaps Fan Yafu, under duress, had betrayed Zhang Hangjiang's information, hence his feeling of hopelessness. As for his mention of a pension, it might have been a premonition of being silenced.
The matter of a traitor was too easy to investigate; he would certainly be exposed.
After Cai Yun left, the sky had completely darkened.
However, neither Hu Jia nor Lü Qingqing chose to go home. They remained at the West City Prison, outwardly stating they didn't want to travel at night, but in reality, they wanted to stay and continue investigating the case.
This was because the prison authorities had already gone to pick up Fan Yafu's family, and he wanted to meet with them.
"Perhaps you should drop this case?" Lü Qingqing was a bit worried about Hu Jia's health, as the last time had terrified her. She had heard that Hu Jia had fallen unconscious in Tuwan Village, with slight tremors.
"Don't worry, this case isn't that complicated. I can handle it," Hu Jia gave Lü Qingqing a reassuring smile.
"But..."
"I've already gotten involved."