The sudden turn of events caught Zhou Yi completely off guard.
He truly hadn't expected the provincial Procuratorate to pull something like this just as he had assigned Yan Li a task and Yan Li was about to carry out his orders.
What was this supposed to mean?
Were they simply targeting Yan Li, or were they targeting me?
Whoever their target was, he had to get to the bottom of it first. And this was where the importance of cultivating goodwill became clear!
He immediately called Wu Daojun.
You asked me to help with a secret investigation, and I agreed. Surely you can do me this small favor and share some inside information that doesn't violate your principles?
After taking the call, Wu Daojun readily agreed to help. About twenty minutes later, he called back.
"Deputy Director Zhou, I asked around. While reviewing and verifying the Song Tianlin rape case, the Procuratorate discovered significant leads indicating that Yan Li, the investigator handling the case, had tortured Song Tianlin to extract a confession. Those included Song Tianlin's own account and testimony from others. They therefore decided to open a criminal investigation into Yan Li. Procedurally speaking, there's nothing wrong with it."
There was indeed nothing wrong with the procedure. Under the Supreme People's Procuratorate's "Provisions on the Standards for Filing Cases Involving Crimes of Dereliction of Duty and Infringement of Rights," a case should be opened where a suspect was alleged to have "used such egregious methods as beating, binding, or the unlawful use of implements to extract a confession."
But Zhou Yi immediately picked out the key words in Wu Daojun's explanation-"others."
Song Tianlin's own account would not have been the decisive factor in opening a criminal investigation. The key, then, lay in the testimony of those "others."
And