Ch16 - Cardiovascular Ward 11

Now that they had identified the option for the additional question, the next step was to use the ‘elimination method’ to find the best answer.

Yue Xingwen glanced at the 20 medical records in Ke Shaobin’s laptop and said to him, “After regrouping the cases according to the time of death, how many times in total did concentrated patient deaths occur?” 

Ke Shaobin quickly sorted out the information in the table, and said, “There are four times in total. 5 people died from June 1st to 3rd; 7 people died from August 10th to 13th; 8 people died from October 15th to 20th; We were hospitalized from December 25th, and 8 more people died in two days.”

Yue Xingwen looked carefully at the four groups of cases, and continued, “Sort out all the patients and the doctors and nurses on duty who were left in the cardiovascular ward at the time of the four cases and find the list with the highest overlap.”

Ke Shaobin sorted the information by name, and the answer was very clear when compared through the table.

Yue Xingwen wrote down the five options he had just identified on a piece of paper and analyzed, “First, the patient in bed no. 20, he was not present during the past several crimes, and this is his first hospitalization. He does not meet the requirement for the crime and can be ruled out.” 

With that, Yue Xingwen simply crossed out ‘Option A’ with a pen and continued his analysis, “The second, the patient in bed no. 21, 56-year-old Xu Dapeng, he worked as a medical representative before. He was present at the crime on June 1st and August 10th, but he wasn’t hospitalized on October 15th. In other words, there are 4 grouping for the death of the patients, and he is absent in once, so he is not the murderer… he is a key witness!”

“The third, the attending doctor Xiao Wen, who happens to be chief resident this year and he is on the cardiovascular ward almost every day. He can’t be ruled out for now, pending.”

“As for the fourth suspect, 30-year-old resident Dr. Ma Ping, who has night shifts at irregular times. He wasn’t at the scene for the two crimes on June 1st and August 10th. He doesn’t qualify as a perpetrator.”

Then, they set their eyes on the last option.

Option E, the hidden patient that they found out after the database data analysis.

Yue Xingwen looked at the name and narrowed his eyes slightly, “The last suspect, Zhu Yuanbo, 55-year-old male, a retired employee of a pharmaceutical factory. He stayed in the cardiovascular ward on June 1st, August 10th, October 15th and December 24th, every time when there was a group of death patients. At the time of the first crime, he stayed in bed no. 11, the closest one to the old lady who died in bed no. 10. There is a high probability that he is the murderer.”

Yue Xingwen looked at the remaining options on the paper, circled the two names with a pen and said, “Xiao Wen, Zhu Yuanbo, there murderer is among these two people.”

After the original complex situation was compared and sorted out by the data, the situation finally became clearer and the answer became one of the two. 

At noon, Yue Xingwen pretended to wander around the wards and handed the written note to the students.

On the white paper torn from the dictionary, there were a few lines that were written with a black pen, and the handwriting was dashing: “My classmates, the previous 20 victims had all been found. The crime had occurred several times on June 1st, August 10th, October 15th, December 24th. According to the comparison of the data in the case database, at present, the patient in bed no. 20, ben no. 21 and Dr. Ma Ping’s suspicion has been ruled out. They didn’t stay at the scene several times when the crime occurred.”

The students who got the note sighed—— This feeling was like being faced with an additional question on a test paper that they didn’t know how to do at all, and as a result, the top student himself wrote a cheat sheet of solutions for everyone.

In the afternoon that day, Yue Xingwen assigned investigation tasks to the students. A few female students tried to find other patients in the ward to set up a conversation and asked about Dr. Xiao Wen. 

Liu Xiaoxiao with a height of 155cm, cute and petite, and had a particularly sweet mouth, found a grandmother who had been hospitalized three times from the list given by Yue Xingwen. She pretended to make small talk and asked about Dr. Xiao.

At the same time, Yue Xingwen was investigating the key witnesses—— the patient in bed no. 21, Xu Dapeng.

He initially suspected this person was the murderer, but eventually discovered, this person was actually a key witness who had been present at three of the four murders. Old Xu looked energetic as Yue Xingwen and Liu Zhaoqing walked to his ward and pretended to make small talk.

Yue Xingwen said politely, “Uncle, you have already had heart surgery, right? The doctor asked us both to have the surgery and we’re both a little scared, so we want to ask senior who had done the surgery.” 

Xu Dapeng smiled brightly, “What is there to be afraid of from surgery? It’s not like the interventional procedure is an incision in the chest, it’s just a very small incision will be made in the thigh, and a stent will be sent from the thigh’s blood vessel to the inside of the heart.”

Liu Zhaoqing immediately asked, “When did you have the surgery ah?”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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Yue Xingwen asked, “In the early hours of this morning, did you hear any noise coming from the corridor?”

Xu Dapeng carefully recalled for a moment before saying, “I slept quite well, that is… I vaguely felt that a doctor seemed to come to the next bed to change the medicine. Then the ECG monitor’s alarm in the next bed suddenly rang, the doctors and nurses barged into the room to resuscitate him, and I realized it was bed no. 19 that had an accident.”

“Was Dr. Xiao the one in charge of the resuscitation?” 

“En, it’s Dr. Xiao and the nurse on duty who resuscitated each time, and last night they resuscitated for half an hour and couldn’t save the patient. *Sigh*… the patient in bed no. 19 was really unfortunate, he was only 55 years old, about the same age as me.”

Both of them looked at each other and chit-chat with old Xu some more about daily life before leaving from the ward.

Old Xu’s memories of his previous hospitalization were not very clear, but this time, the murderer happened to kill the patient next to him, and he was aware of someone coming to change the medicine in the next bed in the early morning, proving that the murderer’s modus operandi was indeed to inject the patient with drugs.

Liu Xiaoxiao was waiting for them in the corridor. When she saw Yue Xingwen, she immediately stepped forward and whispered, “Xingwen, a few of us split up to ask some grandmothers in the ward, and everyone spoke highly of Dr. Xiao. There was a grandmother who was rescued by Dr. Xiao. In addition, they also gossip that Dr. Xiao is so busy with his work that he hasn’t even looked for a girlfriend. There was a grandmother in the ward who enthusiastically introduced him to a girl, but he refused with the reason that he was too busy at work.” 

Too busy at work to get a girlfriend?

Yue Xingwen touched his chin and fell into thought.

In the past six months, Dr. Xiao had been in the ward every day, and he had sufficient time and conditions to commit the crime.

Assuming that he had an antisocial personality disorder, or was a psychopath, and after many years studying medicine, he started to slaughter his own patients relying on what he had learned, and then in a bad mood, he killed several patients to find excitement and a sense of accomplishment… 

Then why was he murdering people in groups?

He had been staying in the ward for a long time and could have killed anyone at any time 365 days a year, there was no need to centralize on a few days to kill several in a row.

With a large number of patients dying on consecutive days, Dr. Xiao had to resuscitate them, and he needed to discuss the cases, do the summaries, and report the results of the discussions to his superior. He would be very busy.

While injecting the patient with drugs to trigger a myocardial infarction, Dr. Xiao had to run over to resuscitate the patient, and he needed to resuscitate several patients in one night. After he failed to save them, and then he would write a death report… Was he too idle to trouble himself to this extent? 

For his case, it would make more sense to kill one every few days so that no one would notice, right?

Besides, there were grandmothers in the ward who said that they were rescued by Xiao Wen after a heart attack, so if Dr. Xiao was the murderer, why would he kill and save people at the same time? This was really inconsistent and did not make sense.

Relatively speaking, Zhu Yuanbo’s suspicion was even greater.

Yue Xingwen was silent for a moment and whispered to Liu Zhaoqing, “Senior, it seems that we have to check this Zhu Yuanbo personally.” 

Liu Zhaoqing asked seriously, “Are you trying to sneak into his ward?”

Yue Xingwen nodded and turned to Liu Xiaoxiao and said, “Can you call Qin Lu? I need her help.”

Liu Xiaoxiao quickly called Qin Lu from the Geography Department over. Yue Xingwen motioned for the three to lean over to him and whispered, “Zhu Yuanbo just finished dinner. Before going to bed, he should go out and throw away his lunchbox. While he went out, senior brother, you can try to find a way to entangle him while Qin Lu and I go into the ward to search for clues. Senior brother, send us a sign as soon as he returns.”

The two people said they understood. 

Around 7pm in the evening, all the patients in the ward had just finished dinner.

Yue Xingwen and Liu Zhaoqing pretended to take a walk near the nurses’ station, while Qin Lu and Liu Xiaoxiao sat in the chairs next to them, found a cardiovascular disease brochure from the ward, and looked down at it carefully.

After waiting for a long time, the door of the VIP ward suddenly opened.

The four people’s nerves immediately tensed up. 

An old man came out from the ward, carrying his lunchbox in his left hand, and he turned to throw the garbage to where the lunch box was thrown collectively. Yue Xingwen made a gesture behind him and when the old man was far away, he and Qin Lu darted into the ward.

The VIP-1 ward was located in the lower left corner, there was a glass window on the door. Usually, the curtain on the glass window could be closed to maintain privacy, but as long as the curtain was opened, they could clearly observe the situation of the nurses’ station, and sneaked out to commit crimes when the nurses were away.

The VIP ward was spacious, with a soft sofa and LCD TV on the wall.

Yue Xingwen noticed that the ward did not have a folding bed for family members to spend the night with, nor were there any fruit baskets or flowers or anything like that, so apparently no one had come to visit him at all during his stay. The entire ward was so clean, even the quilts on the beds were neat and tidy. It seemed, this old Zhu had a certain degree of OCD. 

Yue Xingwen turned his attention to the wardrobe that the patient used to put their daily necessities. After he opened it, and quickly rummaged through it. There was a black suit hanging in the wardrobe, which was worn by old Zhu before he was hospitalized. Yue Xingwen rummaged through the suit pockets and pulled out a wallet from it.

There was a photo in the wallet.

The photo was a family portrait of four people, two sitting in front and two standing behind them.

Yue Xingwen instantly recognized the old man sitting in front with greying temples as Zhu Yuanbo, and the dignified old lady he was gently embracing should be his wife. Standing behind them was a beautiful girl with a ponytail, who had two lovely dimples on her face when she smiled. And there was another young man—— 

It was actually Dr. Xiao Wen.

Yue Xingwen’s scalp tingled as he quickly put the photo into his pocket, hung up Zhu Yuanbo’s suit, and continued rummaging underneath his wardrobe. Then, Yue Xingwen found a brand new white coat that had been folded at the bottom.

Qin Lu was stunned and whispered, “It looks like he’s wearing a white coat and pretending to be a doctor going in and out of the ward?”

Yue Xingwen’s expression turned serious and said, “Go to the bathroom and check it out.” 

Qin Lu pushed open the bathroom door. The bathroom was also very neat and tidy, and Yue Xingwen looked around the toilet to search for the clues, and suddenly, Qin Lu said, “Xingwen, look here!” He looked at Qin Lu’s gaze and took a closer look, then he actually found a needle in the corner next to the trash can.

Qin Lu tore a piece of tissue and held the needle up carefully to show it to Yue Xingwen.

It was a needle from a disposable syringe.

The patient’s needle was uniformly taken back to the medical waste garbage by the nurses, and the injection needle that appeared in the ward’s bathroom was obviously something that old Zhu had brought into the hospital privately. While he was sorting out his tools for the crime in the bathroom, a brand new needle accidentally fell in the corner of the trash can and was found by Qin Lu and Yue Xingwen. 

At this moment, a conversation suddenly sounded outside, “Hello uncle, I’d like to ask if you’ve ever had an interventional surgery before ah? *sigh*. Uncle, don’t ignore me, I’m a patient next door… Uncle!”

Liu Zhaoqing’s voice was very loud, mixed with the sound of footsteps, old Zhu was back!

Yue Xingwen immediately closed the bathroom door with his hand.

The door of the ward was gently pushed open with a ‘squeak’s sound, and Zhu Yuanbo’s footsteps were getting closer and closer, heading towards the bathroom. Qin Lu quickly took out her globe and said, “Plate movement!” 

The bathroom plate where the two were located and the plate that Qin Lu had set before were instantly switched places, and both of them suddenly appeared in the rest are in the upper left corner of the cardiovascular ward, where Liu Xiaoxiao was waiting for them.

Seeing the two people teleported out of the ward unharmed, Liu Xiaoxiao breathed a sigh of relief and stepped forward to ask, “Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine.” Yue Xingwen handed the photo to Liu Xiaoxiao and said, “This girl should be Xiao Wen’s girlfriend.”

Liu Xiaoxiao took the photo and said, “It’s not just a girlfriend. They both have rings on their hands, so they should already be engaged!” 

Yue Xingwen looked down at the position of Liu Xiaoxiao’s finger, and sure enough, in the gap between the two people’s position, he could see the two young people behind were intimately interlocking their fingers, and there was indeed something reflective on their fingers, which was a pair of wedding rings.

Liu Xiaoxiao suddenly realized and said, “No wonder Dr. Xiao hasn’t been looking for a girlfriend, he should like this fiancée very much and can’t forget her, so when others introduced him to girlfriends, they were all rejected by him with the excuse of being too busy with work!”

The clues were finally all tied up.

Yue Xingwen led the two female students quickly to the ward in the upper right corner and handed the photo to Ke Shaobin and said, “Search the information further back and check if there was a girl surnamed Zhu who died of a heart disease within the last few years.” 

Ke Shaobin’s mind jolted after seeing the photo, and he hurriedly turned on his laptop to search for the keywords. Within a few moments, he found a 25-year-old girl named ‘Zhu Chenxue’ who had died of a heart disease a year ago, at 1am early in the morning. In Zhu Chenxue’s ‘family’ column, her father’s name was Zhu Yuanbo, and her mother’s name was Xue Huaning. Ke Shaobin continued to search for Xue Huaning, and he found that the 50-year-old mother actually died of a heart disease a year ago as well, and the time of death was also in the early hours in the morning.

Four of them looked at each other.

Yue Xingwen looked at the photo again and sighed lightly. “We’ve found the murderer’s motive for the crime.”

In the photo, Zhu Yuanbo had a gentle and loving smile, his daughter was finally engaged to a young and talented doctor. However, the good times did not last long, as his beloved wife and only daughter died of heart disease one after another. Zhu Yuanbo’s psychology gradually became twisted, and he began to kill heart disease patients in the ward who could receive treatment. 

Xiao Wen was his daughter’s fiancé, and he could easily be admitted to the cardiovascular ward by virtue of this relationship.

Xiao Wen probably felt guilty about the death of his fiancée, so he never refused his ‘prospective father-in-law’ to be hospitalized. When old Zhu wanted to be hospitalized, Xiao Wen could  make room for him and took care of him personally, and this time he was directly admitted to the VIP ward. Dr. Xiao probably did not expect this old man would turn into a bloodthirsty butcher because of his wife and daughter’s death.

He was present in all four when the crime happened.

He was at the closest distance to the first deceased. 

Both his wife and daughter died of a heart disease, resulting in psychological distortions.

Being a heart disease patient himself, and working in a pharmacy related field, he knew how to quickly kill the heart patients.

A needle was found in his ward’s bathroom, and brand new white clothes were found in his wardrobe.

The photo gave a hint at his special relationship with the ward’s attending doctor, Xiao Wen. 

Irrefutable evidence.

The murderer lurking in the cardiovascular ward was this mysterious patient—— VIP ward’s patient, Zhu Yuanbo!