Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Julien XIV

“I hate doing an analysis of the victim the most.” Lang Qiao pouted, holding her pen between her nose and mouth. “Sometimes the victim was killed for no reason, and I can’t let it go for a long time. I keep saying, why? Why did a perfectly nice person run into some bad luck and end up like this? Why did someone who’d worked hard all his life, struggled for years, at the very end got finished off by some scumbag coming out of nowhere? But when the victim wasn’t innocent, or he was simply guilty and deserved to be punished, I think he had it coming, and us tracking down the murderer for him is just giving succor to the enemy, and I—ouch!” 

Luo Wenzhou had rolled a document into a paper tube and hit her on the back of the head, breaking off Lang Qiao’s long-winded speech. 

Lang Qiao held the back of her head. “What are you hitting me for? Everything I’m saying is normal human feelings. Police are human, too!” 

“Do you want your salary?” asked Luo Wenzhou.

Lang Qiao said, “…Yes.” 

“If you want it, then do your job. What’s all this pontificating for?” Luo Wenzhou pulled over a whiteboard. Under a photograph of the young man with a moon-shaped scar on his forehead, he wrote: “He Zhongyi, male, eighteen years old, delivery man, H Province native” and other such basic facts. 

Then, taking advantage of his height, he looked over the little whiteboard and through the office’s clear glass window at Fei Du keeping He Zhongyi’s mother company. 

Having heard some wild talk, Mother He had felt very desperate over the City Bureau setting Zhang Donglai free. As if determining that she had nowhere left to turn for help, she’d cried herself to the point of collapse; she had been hardly able to walk upright. She had been propped up by Fei Du on the way in. 

Perhaps she had instinctively clutched at a straw, or perhaps she’d determined that Fei Du was part of Zhang Donglai’s group, so she “couldn’t let him get away”; when Mother He’s mind had gone blank, she’d subconsciously tightened her hold on to Fei Du’s clothes. 

Fei Du had been dramatically forced to stay, leading to the scene outside the window. 

Fei Du was a young man, after all. If he’d wanted to forcefully shake off this chronically ill woman who barely reached his chest, it would have been easy. But contrary to expectations, he hadn’t flared up; he’d only calmly sat with this old and ugly woman. 

By now Mother He had already come back from the exhaustion of her collapse and recovered some metal faculties. Luo Wenzhou watched as Fei Du held her hand and bent down, quietly discussing something with her. Whatever fine words he was using, they were actually making Mother He slowly calm down; she was even occasionally able to nod or shake her head in response. 

“Has Ma Xiaowei been released?” Luo Wenzhou asked, looking out the window. 

Tao Ran put down the phone. “No, the person I talked to at the sub-bureau says that Ma Xiaowei started going into withdrawal over there. The civil police went to search his residence and turned up a good deal of loose drugs, so they’ve kept him under arrest.” 

“Can we get him over here for questioning?” said Luo Wenzhou. 

Tao Ran shrugged. “No. They say his condition is very unstable. If something happens, the sub-bureau won’t be able to shoulder the responsibility. If we really want to question him, we’ll have to send someone to the sub-bureau to question him there.” 

Wang Hongliang had settled on the idea of not letting anyone speak to Ma Xiaowei alone. To this end, he was giving the teenager the treatment of a relic in a museum—others were only permitted to look at him through a window; if they wanted to take him away, there was no door.