Looking at Zhou Er, who was lying on the ground snoring, Xiao Chen was stunned. Could things turn out like this?
The veteran detectives were, of course, experienced in such situations. Li Qiang smiled faintly, picked up the ice - cold beer on the table, and poured it onto Zhou Er's neck.
Drinking ice - cold beer on a sweltering summer day was surely a refreshing experience. But for Zhou Er, who was sound asleep in his dream, he suddenly felt a chill on his neck. Then, a bone - chilling coldness slowly spread from his neck down to his chest.
In the chilly air - conditioned room, it was an indescribably strange feeling.
"Ah!" Zhou Er sat up abruptly, thinking that Li Ming had played a trick on him. He looked at Li Ming blurrily and scolded, "Are you crazy, you brat? How dare you interrupt my good dream?"
Unexpectedly, Li Ming hung his head timidly and didn't even dare to look at him.
"What's wrong with you? Say something!" Zhou Er had drunk too much. At first, he didn't even notice that there were several people around him.
When Li Ming didn't answer, he felt something was amiss. His big bald head turned around, and he saw two people guarding the door and two standing in front of Li Ming.
He joked, "Well done, Li Ming. Where did you hire these bodyguards? They all look like martial artists at first glance."
Martial artists, my foot!
Li Ming really wanted to shake Zhou Er's head to see if he could shake out some water.
After all this time, Zhou Er was so oblivious. Since when did bodyguards carry guns and handcuffs on their waists?
"Ah, haha." Zhou Er struggled to stand up and staggered towards Li Ming, trying to get familiar with him. "You've made it, but you can't forget your brother, right?"
Li Ming turned his head away, wearing an expression of utter disbelief.
Li Qiang found it quite amusing. He took out his weapon and nudged Zhou Er's arm.
"What are you doing?!" Zhou Er said impatiently and slapped at the thing in Li Qiang's hand.
A sharp pain shot through his fingers. Zhou Er jumped up in pain and turned to scold Li Qiang, "What the hell is that? It hurts so much when I hit it!"
Then, when he saw clearly what was in Li Qiang's hand, his legs went weak, and he collapsed onto the ground.
It was a pair of silver - colored handcuffs, a VIP - customized one.
"Who, who are you?" Zhou Er pointed at Li Qiang tremblingly and asked.
The detectives around were all holding back their laughter.
Li Qiang played with the handcuffs cheerfully and replied, "Who do you think we are?"
"We?" Zhou Er tilted his head. Due to the effect of alcohol, his mind was in a complete mess and couldn't think straight.
It took him a while to understand what Li Qiang meant.
Zhou Er's fingers trembled as he pointed at the people standing beside him, and his lips were quivering too. "Are these all policemen?"
Li Qiang was both amused and annoyed by this suspect with such a thick nerve.
"Arrest him!" At the order, several people who had been lying in wait jumped out immediately.
Since there were four or five detectives and only one suspect, they piled on top of Zhou Er like a human pyramid, pressing him to the bottom.
When Zhou Er finally got out from under them, he almost couldn't catch his breath.
After experiencing the suffocating pain, Zhou Er finally sobered up a bit.
He looked at Li Ming, then at the room full of policemen, and pointed at Li Ming, scolding, "Li Ming! I've always been good to you. How could you betray me?"
Li Ming also tried to persuade him earnestly, "Brother Zhou, at this point, can you escape? Aren't I a living example? I even hid in this small place like Buhai, but I still got caught."
The policemen from Buhai City felt offended.
"Fine," Zhou Er sighed. He voluntarily stretched out his hands and let them put on the handcuffs. Dejectedly, he said, "I've always known that those in our line of work would end up like this sooner or later. But I just couldn't resist. Who could resist such huge profits?"
Xiao Chen was still young and couldn't help arguing, "So you can just throw away your conscience? Those kids are innocent lives!"
These people in front of them only regarded those innocent students as goods, not as human beings at all.
Zhou Er looked at this young policeman strangely and almost burst out laughing. Calmly, he said, "We brothers have to make a living. This way of making money is fast, and we were prepared to risk our lives."
Seeing the criminals acting as if they were justified and showing no sign of repentance, Xiao Chen wished he could send them to prison right away to atone for their sins.
It was just that they couldn't control their greedy and dirty hearts.
According to Li Ming's testimony, Zhou Er was in direct contact with the middleman. Li Ming was responsible for bringing people to Zhou Er, and Zhou Er would then hand them over to the buyers.
Catching Zhou Er meant they were one step closer to the mastermind behind the scenes.
Whether it was the time limit set by the provincial public security department to solve the case or the unprecedented brutality of this criminal gang, the policemen couldn't bear to leave the workroom for a moment.
They were all eager to dig information out of Zhou Er's mouth.
In the interrogation room, Zhou Er was sitting sprawled out, with his butt almost touching the ground. Li Qiang couldn't stand it anymore and kicked him.
Zhou Er let out a scream and started yelling nonsense, "Help! Help! The policemen are beating me! They're extorting confessions by torture!"
No one around paid any attention to him. Except for Li Qiang and another experienced veteran detective from Buhai City, the others were all watching from outside.
This case was so cruel that even the veteran detectives who had handled countless criminal cases found it too much. They felt no sympathy for these criminals at all.
As Xiao Chen put it, were these criminals pitiful? What about those students? Some of them hadn't even taken the college entrance examination, gone to college, or enjoyed life, yet they left the world in such a cruel way.
Li Qiang also knew that it was useless to reason with such inhumane criminals.
He stared at Zhou Er silently without saying a word.
Zhou Er was a coward at heart. He knew he wouldn't end up well.
The veteran detective beside him asked, "Do you know why we arrested you?"
"You've already caught Li Ming. Why do you still need to ask me?"
"Slap!" The veteran detective was so angry that he slammed his recording pen on the table.
Zhou Er couldn't help but shiver.
"I advise you to be honest. If you confess earlier, you can claim that you've cooperated actively in court. Otherwise, even the King of Hell can't save you."
Zhou Er was used to bullying the weak and fearing the strong. Now that he had been arrested, intimidated by the veteran detective, he immediately spilled everything.
Li Qiang secretly let out a sigh of relief.
There were only five days left until the case - solving deadline. He was really worried that Zhou Er would keep his mouth shut. Unexpectedly, he was just a coward.
Zhou Er told everything he knew in detail.
It was like pouring out beans. There was useful information mixed with a lot of nonsense, and they had to screen and distinguish the truth.
This was really tough for the recorder, who had to listen to so much nonsense.
After listening to Zhou Er's confession, they finally understood why this gang was so arrogant.
They didn't have a formal organization or meetings. Everything was passed down from top to bottom. Usually, those involved in a single operation didn't even know what the others were doing.