Traces of a Crime

At Central Hospital, a patient in Room 806 died of natural causes from late-stage stomach cancer. But Xu Jiani, a 27-year-old nurse, spotted a blurred reflection in the dead person’s pupils that should not have been there. A strip of medical tape had suddenly appeared on the bedside table. A mark remained on the oxygen valve knob where the adhesive had been peeled off. Someone had used her employee ID to check medication records in the System logs. Every detail pointed to Liu Zhigang, head of the pharmacy department. She made a phone call. Forty minutes later, Gu Shen, a forensic trace examiner with the city public security bureau’s criminal investigation squad, arrived at the scene. Three people had been in the room that night: the deceased, the killer, and one other person. Just as Xu Jiani thought she was standing before the truth, her phone lit up. A text arrived from an unknown number: Don’t stand by the door. It was from her husband, Bai Yang. The man who hung up her white coat for her every night and checked whether she had closed the windows before bed. The architect who never wore his wedding ring around her: a highly intelligent criminal. What she didn’t know was that everything that happened tonight, starting with the first drop of oxygen being cut off, was part of his plan. This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.