Chapter 4: The Milk Bottle with the Altered Date

As noon approached, Lin Che received a call from Zhou Leping. "Cousin! Is it true that Little Feather is dead?!"

"Yes."

The news of the death had already been announced, so Lin Che had nothing to hide. "It's murder! It must be murder! Little Feather would never commit suicide! Absolutely not!"

Zhou Leping's voice was filled with agitation over the phone. Lin Che tried to calm him down but still felt uneasy. He then called Song Ying, asking her to contact the homeroom teacher, as this kid might actually skip school and run to the police station. A colleague from the forensic team handed Lin Che an inspection record sheet and an evidence bag. "Captain Lin, we haven't found anything unusual at the scene so far, except for this milk bottle, which needs to be sent to the lab for further testing. Preliminary tests show traces of barbiturates in the milk bottle."

Lin Che flipped through the record sheet, took the evidence bag, and frowned slightly. "Wasn't the sleeping pill component found in the glass cup by the bed?"

"Yes, that cup was sent for testing this morning. It did contain a lethal dose of barbiturates, matching the remaining sleeping pills at the deceased's home."

Lin Che held the evidence bag up, examining the small amount of milk left at the bottom of the bottle. He muttered to himself, "But if the milk was poured into the glass to drink, why go through the trouble of putting the sleeping pills in the milk bottle instead of directly into the glass?"

As he lowered his hand, Lin Che noticed several small black stains inside the evidence bag and pointed them out. The forensic colleague also noticed the stains. "Captain Lin, I checked the bag before placing the evidence inside. It was fine."

Lin Che studied the milk bottle and noticed that the production date seemed slightly smudged. He rubbed the bag, and the stains spread a bit. Looking at the date on the milk bottle, Lin Che's frown deepened. "Is this an expired milk bottle?"

"No, it's from yesterday..." The forensic colleague leaned in and exclaimed, "The 20th?! Xiao Zheng, bring the camera!"

The colleague pulled up the evidence photos, and the date on the milk bottle in the photo was the 28th. Lin Che's frown deepened as he stared at the milk bottle, lost in thought. "Captain Lin, do you think the store couldn't sell the milk, so they secretly changed the date?"

Lin Che shook his head. "Unlikely. Changing the date from the 20th to the 28th is too long. Fresh milk has a shelf life of only five days. Whether it's a small convenience store or a large supermarket, they order in small quantities and aim to sell quickly. They have a good sense of daily sales and wouldn't stock too much."

"So, someone deliberately altered the production date of the milk and put the drug inside? This is murder?!"

"It's too early to conclude. Let's carefully re-examine the scene and have a team meeting at 2 PM."

"Understood, Captain Lin."

Office 1209. Xu Yang knocked and entered. "Captain Lin, everyone's ready."

"Okay, I'll be right there."

Lin Che placed the half-read comic book face down on the table and glanced at the time. He had unknowingly spent over an hour reading. Meeting room. "Alright, let's go over the materials everyone has compiled. Zhou Yun, you start."

Zhou Yun was tall and thin, standing over six feet, with slightly dark skin and a hint of a southern accent. Da Zhuang was shorter, stocky, and muscular, the type who could crush someone's skull with a punch. Whether intentional or not, Lin Che always paired these two together, and after several collaborations, they worked surprisingly well. "After graduating in 2011, Zhou Xinyu worked as an administrative staff member at a listed company but resigned within a year. Since 2014, she has been publishing comic works under the pen name Little Feather on the Manmeng website. She worked from home, rarely went out, and had a simple social circle with no known enemies."

"Family-wise, Zhou Xinyu was a rich second-generation. Her parents divorced when she was in elementary school, and she lived with her grandparents. Both parents remarried and, although not close to her, were very generous financially."

After Zhou Yun finished, Da Zhuang stood up to add, "And by generous, I mean extremely generous. From middle school, Zhou Xinyu had a credit card with a limit of 2 million yuan. On her 18th birthday, her father gifted her a property worth 4 million yuan, while her mother gave her a sports car worth over a million."

"Confirmed, a white Ferrari, parked in the underground garage of Riverside Heart," Li Li added.

Da Zhuang continued, "Zhou Xinyu came from a wealthy family and was also very successful herself. Her debut comic 'All Living Things' broke website records multiple times during its serialization, and the rights to several of her works have been sold. Last year alone, her pre-tax income was nearly 10 million yuan. She bought the Riverside Heart apartment in full two years ago and has no debts. Additionally, we checked her large financial transactions over the past few years and found nothing unusual."

Lin Che nodded. "So, it seems money isn't a factor in her death. Xu Yang, what about your side?"

Xu Yang handed out several compiled documents to Li Li as everyone passed them around and listened. "Little Feather had two Weibo accounts. The main account was registered by the comic website, which was also the account used to post the suicide note. The real-name information she provided, aside from her name and phone number, was fake, and the phone number was voluntarily deactivated a year after the account was registered. The secondary account was registered by her during college, unverified, and its content was cleared once. The earliest visible post dates back to December 19, 2012, half a year after she resigned, and it was also a suicide note. That night, Zhou Xinyu was hospitalized after a wrist-slitting suicide attempt."

"I checked Zhou Xinyu's medical records. In 2013, she was hospitalized at least four times for suicide attempts—twice for wrist-slitting, once for overdosing on sleeping pills, and once for jumping into a river."

The information Xu Yang uncovered surprised everyone. "Wow! So she's been contemplating suicide for six years?!"

"She had a house, a car, money, and a decent family relationship. Why was she so desperate? Could it be because of a scumbag?"

Li Li ventured a guess. "Exactly!"

Xu Yang snapped her fingers. "After her first wrist-slitting hospitalization, Zhou Xinyu was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. The medical records indicate that the primary cause was emotional trauma."

Xu Yang briefly summarized what she found: Zhou Xinyu's ex-boyfriend was a scumbag with good looks but nothing else going for him. "Good grief, it seems no one has a perfect life!"

Old Du, who also had a daughter in her second year of college and had recently started dating, was particularly incensed by Zhou Xinyu's suffering at the hands of a scumbag. "What a piece of trash!"