Animal Detective

Chapter 139: Premeditation

A dead silence fell over the interrogation room, broken only by Zhang Qingpeng’s ragged gasps after his outburst.

After a full half-minute, Zhao Tianxing finally asked, "Alright, walk me through your premeditation process. Start from when you decided to kill Wang Lei."

Zhang Qingpeng, his emotions still raw, gritted his teeth. "You’ve already investigated everything, haven’t you? Why are you still asking me?"

Zhao Tianxing said, "Our investigation is one thing, but your confession is another. Let’s start with why you chose to use the rabies virus to murder Wang Lei."

This method of murder was exceptionally rare.

Zhang Qingpeng thought for a moment before speaking. "Actually, at first, I wanted to electrocute him."

"The apartment we rented was renovated by a subletter, right? He used a no-name brand for the water heater, and it had a bit of a short. We almost got zapped right after we moved in. We asked him to fix it, but he said it was too much trouble and just told us to heat the water, then unplug it before using it."

"So I figured that if the plug wasn’t pulled, he might not notice, and maybe he’d get electrocuted and die."

"But I was afraid it wouldn’t kill him. You know, there’s a circuit breaker. If it tripped, he wouldn’t die, and then you’d investigate and come after me."

Zhao Tianxing snorted. "You really thought it through, didn’t you? So how did you land on rabies?"

Zhang Qingpeng said, "The day after our fight, a streamer from my company went to the countryside in Donglin Town to shoot a video. He does those rural life-sharing videos. The company dragged me along to help. Don’t be fooled by my ’content planner’ title; I’m basically just a gofer. We have to do all the crappy jobs, as if we’re the only ones with nothing to do."

He complained resentfully before continuing, "We were filming in Qinxi Town. It’s right next to Lankou, you know? A lot of people raise dogs there. We happened to see some villagers catching a dog, saying it was a rabid dog. We just stood there watching the commotion."

"It was then that I got the idea to use a sick dog to kill Wang Lei."

"It just so happened that guy Wang Lei had bought a cat and was planning to buy a dog for his videos. So I came up with this plan. I figured if he got bitten by a dog, got sick, and died, it would have nothing to do with me."

"At first, I wanted to find two mutts, but it turned out to be difficult. I was browsing a second-hand app and stumbled upon a seller from Xinyun who wanted to get rid of a pair of huskies. He said they were from the same litter, and when I looked, I saw they really did look incredibly similar."

"If you didn’t look closely, you couldn’t tell them apart at all. And what’s more, the guy wasn’t a professional breeder. His son had bought the two dogs, then left to find work somewhere else and didn’t want them anymore, so he had his dad post them on the app to sell."

"I specifically asked about vaccinations, because a lot of dog owners vaccinate their pets. But it turned out he’d never bothered with it. They got one rabies shot when they were puppies, but now they’re over two years old, so the vaccine had already expired."

"So I contacted him and bought both dogs. I booked a car service, and they were delivered to me the next day."

"I even took them to a vet clinic to get their antibodies tested. Sure enough, there were none. The more I looked at those two dogs, the more perfect they seemed."

"By this point, the anger had mostly passed. I was scared and even thought about just forgetting the whole thing."

Zhao Tianxing interjected, "Then why didn’t you stop?"

In the observation room, Shen Xin was wondering the same thing.

The two of them had argued on September 11th.

A crime of passion, committed in a fit of rage, would have been understandable.

But from the end of the argument until Wang Lei was bitten on October 8th, almost a full month had passed.

The fact that Zhang Qingpeng hadn’t given up on murdering Wang Lei was a bit unusual.

It wasn’t as if this was some deep-seated grudge where revenge is a dish best served cold.

A cold glint appeared in Zhang Qingpeng’s eyes. "Because he was asking for it. After the fight, we stopped talking to each other. But then what does he do? I’d order takeout, and he’d order takeout too—a whole pile of good food. He’d eat it right in front of me, and whatever he couldn’t finish, he’d throw straight in the trash. He even said something like, ’I should get a dog, then at least the leftovers won’t go to waste.’"

"Wasn’t he doing that just to piss me off?" Zhang Qingpeng demanded loudly.

Zhao Tianxing frowned.

If that was true, then Wang Lei had his own set of problems.

"He’s into shoes, right? He bought a pair of Air Jordans. I came home from work and found a pair of my shoes from the shoe rack thrown in the trash. I asked him what was going on, and you know what he said? He said they were just a beat-up old pair, that I’d worn them for ages and should’ve just tossed them."

"Since he was going to be like that, fine. I decided I absolutely had to kill him."

"I brought the dog home and told him, ’Hey, weren’t you thinking of getting a dog? A colleague of mine has one they don’t want anymore and is willing to sell it cheap.’"

"As for the other dog, I rented a garage in the complex to keep it in. I even took it with me to Qinxi. I figured since a sick dog had appeared there, it might have bitten other dogs. There are a lot of strays over there."

"I ended up wandering around for two days, and I actually ran into one. Honestly, I never thought it would go so smoothly."

"It must have been on the 21st. The other dog got bitten. Then, after a little over two weeks, that dog started acting strange. I felt like it was about to get sick."

"So on the 8th, I swapped the dogs."

Zhao Tianxing cut him off. "So, you’re saying you would regularly switch the two dogs?"

Because in the deleted videos, both dogs had appeared.

Zhang Qingpeng nodded. "That’s right. I was afraid that if I suddenly brought the other dog over and it wasn’t familiar with Wang Lei, he’d notice something was off. He didn’t walk the dog much anyway—sometimes I was the one walking it. So I’d swap them. That way, both dogs were familiar with him. Even if their personalities were a little different, it would be hard for him to tell."

"The guy bought the dog purely to make videos. He didn’t really care for it otherwise. In any case, he never found out."

"That night, I swapped the dogs, used ’working overtime’ as an excuse to go to the garage I rented, and then... well, you know the rest. I sent him two gifts, and he got bitten."

Zhao Tianxing nodded and asked a final question. "And the sick dog? What did you do with it?"

Zhang Qingpeng hesitated. "After he got bitten that night, I used the excuse of walking the dog to swap them back. The sick one... I just killed it."

"The next day, I took it over to Dingshan and buried it in a place where no one goes."

Zhao Tianxing considered this, then had Ding Yuwei print out the transcript for Zhang Qingpeng to sign.

He actually wanted to ask what it felt like for Zhang Qingpeng to watch Wang Lei walk toward a dead end, live on stream, on the night of the 8th.

But on second thought, he decided against it.

After signing and giving his thumbprint, just as Zhao Tianxing and his partner were about to leave, Zhang Qingpeng suddenly looked up and asked, "Am I going to get the death penalty?"

In that moment, panic returned to his face.

Zhao Tianxing didn’t answer and walked straight out of the interrogation room.

He went next door.

"Damn, what a mess," Zhao Tianxing cursed, tossing the transcript onto the table.

Ding Yuwei sighed as well. "Honestly, I feel like if Wang Lei hadn’t kept provoking Zhang Qingpeng after their fight, Zhang Qingpeng probably wouldn’t have been so determined to go through with it."

She could tell that Zhang Qingpeng didn’t have strong nerves; he had been terrified throughout the entire process.

Shen Xin nodded in agreement.

They said Zhang Qingpeng was jealous, but wasn’t Wang Lei jealous too?

Before, when they were both streaming on the same platform and Zhang Qingpeng was the one who got popular, Wang Lei was always calling him "Brother Peng, Brother Peng." Wasn’t he jealous deep down?

When they both left Songpu, both down on their luck, they lived together peacefully as roommates for a long time.

It was only after Wang Lei unexpectedly blew up that Zhang Qingpeng’s mentality became unbalanced.

And Wang Lei, driven by vanity, deliberately flaunted his success in front of Zhang Qingpeng, provoking him.

"Speaking of which."

Shen Xin furrowed his brow. "The reason Wang Lei got popular... it’s because of me."

He went viral overnight because he posted that video of Da Mei training Black Panther.

From that perspective, if it weren’t for me, Wang Lei might not have died.

Ding Yuwei quickly said, "Shen Xin, you can’t think like that. Wang Lei was too vain. Even without the video of Da Mei, if one of his other videos had blown up later, he still would have flaunted it in front of Zhang Qingpeng."

Shen Xin waved his hand dismissively.

"I’m just saying. I’m not taking it to heart, so you don’t have to worry about me."

Ding Yuwei’s gaze flickered. She rolled her eyes and muttered, ’Who’s worried about you?’