You're My Belated Happiness - Chapter 52 Part 2

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.

You’re My Belated Happiness

Chapter 52 Part 2

Xu Huaisong took off his jacket as he was speaking to go to the bathroom. When he started to unbutton his shirt, Ruan Yu hurriedly turned her back to him: “I, I’ll just play around with your computer. Take your time……”

She picked up his laptop and sat down with her back to the bathroom, resting the laptop in her lap.

Ruan Yu’s heart skipped a beat when she heard the sound of Xu Huaisong’s belt buckle striking against the wooden barrel.

The bathroom wasn’t soundproof.

When she heard the sound of running water, she blinked her eyes and tried to concentrate on the computer screen. With a glance, she saw a folder named “Jiang Yi case.”

Ruan Yu knew that lately Xu Huaisong had revisited the ten years old case repeatedly because of Zhou Jun’s case. He was trying to learn his father’s defense strategies since the two cases were quite similar.

Ruan Yu double clicked on the folder.

She decided to read about the case to distract herself.

In the folder, there were many images and text documents. She skipped the ones that looked more technical, but opened a document which had a brief description of the case.

It was written from the lawyer’s perspective, therefore it was based on the client’s statement.

In the statement, it described the victim as a student of Su City Business College. She was Jiang Yi’s junior in the same department and Jiang Yi was about to graduate.

On the day of the incident, Jiang Yi, the victim, and several other students from the same department were having dinner together. After dinner, they went to a bar. They all had drinks at the bar, then Jiang Yi and the victim, who had just started dating, left the bar together, leaving their friends behind. Under the influence of alcohol, they had sex in the public restroom on the roadside.

Afterwards, Jiang Yi received a phone call from his family. He hastily left without taking the woman home. The next time he heard of her was that the woman’s body was discovered in a stall of the public restroom.

The autopsy report indicated that the cause of death was due to head trauma when she struck the back of her head against the water tank of the toilet. She was found dead at the scene.

Jiang Yi had a similar reaction as Zhou Jun at the time. He panicked and chose to run when faced with a police investigation.

But he couldn’t get away.

Criminal profiling indicated that the suspect should be a male about 23 years old and tall.

The other students also testified that the victim had left the bar together with Jiang Yi. 

The most damning evidence was that the semen stains on the victim matched Jiang Yi’s DNA. In addition, the timing of when he received the phone call was quite close to the time of the victim’s death and investigators couldn't conclusively determine which came first in order to clear him. The public restroom was also rather basic, with no surveillance nearby.

Under the pressure of public outcry and police interrogation, Jiang Yi had a mental breakdown. He even began to doubt whether he really was the killer of the victim and gave self-contradictory statements.

Jiang Yi’s family hired Xu Huaisong’s father to defend him and he was eventually acquitted.

It was finally clear to Ruan Yu why Tao Rong and Xu Huaishi couldn’t understand Xu Huaisong’s father. From the perspective of an onlooker, Jiang Yi did “look” like he was the killer.

No wonder Zhou Jun had said that Xu’s father had the ability to turn black into white.

Ruan Yu’s full attention was on the case and didn’t notice that the water had stopped running behind her in the bathroom.

She backed out of the document and went back to the folder. She moved the cursor and saw a picture taken the night of the incident of all the students at the dinner.

The good looking Jiang Yi was at the center of the picture. He was chatting happily with the others besides him, looking like he was in the prime of his life.

It was hard to imagine that the person in the picture would become someone who made a living by scavenging ten years later.

Ruan Yu sighed. Right before she was going to close the picture, she suddenly noticed that in the picture there was a person looking somewhat familiar at the corner of the dinner table.

She frowned and enlarged the picture.

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.