Silent Reading 默读 [BL Novel by Priest]

Chapter 21-32

CHAPTER 21 [Julien- Twenty]

"Officer Tao, just in case the test results come in and prove I was overreacting, could I ask you to keep this a secret for me?" This was Attorney Liu's third phone call to Tao Ran, the gist as before being "I would love nothing better than to go back in time half an hour and cut off the hand that phoned you."

Tao Ran sighed helplessly, feeling that this Attorney Liu really was a little neurotic.

Attorney Liu then jabbered, "Otherwise I'll really have no way to carry on in this profession. What would you call this thing I've done? You absolutely can't tell anyone else about this. My well-being and my family's are in your hands."

Tao Ran could only reassure him for the third time, all but raising his hand to heaven to swear and signing his mark. The overcautious and indecisive lawyer on the other end was finally forced to agree to bring the tie to the City Bureau at once for testing.

Having dealt with him, Tao Ran very apologetically turned his head and smiled at the young woman in the backseat. "Sorry."

He'd been disturbed by Attorney Liu in the middle of watching a movie. The movie had just gotten to the part where the male and female main characters were having a falling out—he and the young lady had walked out amidst the crying, sniveling, and mutual accusations; it really wasn't a very auspicious beginning for a relationship.

But the young lady hadn't said anything about it. Even if she was inwardly cursing, she had the self-possession not to show it. She very understandingly said, "If you're busy, there's no need to see me home.—Driver, please stop a moment by the subway entrance up ahead. Then you can take him where he's going."

The roots of Tao Ran's ears turned red—he was all embarrassment. "That's not...not very..."

"It's fine. We also regularly get called out to work overtime on the weekends," the young lady said. "And when we work overtime, it's only to make money for our boss. You're working for public safety.—And I've read about that case of the rich kid killing someone online. You have to hurry up and solve it."

Stuttering a little, Tao Ran said, "It's not, not necessarily the rich kid, we...we're still not sure of the killer."

As they spoke, the taxi had already come to the subway entrance. The driver, all smiles, stopped the car, and waited for the young lady to wave Tao Ran goodbye.

Before leaving, the young lady remembered something and turned back to say to him, "It's very nice to be able to meet an old classmate when I'm away from home, even if the way the two of us met was a little awkward."

If there had been a hole in the ground, Tao Ran definitely would have jumped in without a backward glance.

This far from home, what were the chances of ending up on a blind date with your senior middle school classmate? And then what were the chances that the senior middle school classmate would just happen to be the person you had a crush on back then?

Of course, there was nothing worth celebrating about here. Even if he'd managed to get a date with Audrey Hepburn, at this moment he'd still have to throw her aside and go work overtime.

When he had seen the girl go into the subway station, his critically obstructed intellect at last returned to its regular path. Deputy-Captain Tao shook his head to force the porridge in his head to turn back into normal brains and once more focus on the case.

Looking on from the sidelines, the taxi driver issued a conclusion: "Young man, you have hope."

Tao Ran laughed bitterly. "Driver, turn back up ahead, go to the City Bureau."

When it came to watching the fun, the middle-aged-to-elderly driver didn't distinguish between big and small matters; he was very interested in both emotional disputes between men and woman and in "rich kid killing people" cases. He really wanted to corner Tao Ran and have a nice chat. At this point, Tao Ran began to regret that he'd turned down his two asshole friends' suggestions of borrowing their cars. To make the chatterbox next to him close his mouth, he had to pretend to be nearly asleep, put on his headphones, and play a random app with sound to stop up his ears.

The audiobook on the phone flowed into his ears amidst soothing background music: "...And what will be left for me," answered Julien, coldly, "if I despise myself?..."

This was a very niche audiobook platform—there weren't many best-sellers on it; for the most part, it was long-in-the-tooth masterpieces, always broadcasting hypnotic prose. And only customers who presented themselves as "reading leaders" could request items to be broadcast.

A "reading leader" had to submit a lengthy original essay analyzing the merit of the work, then be selected by the editor. Only then would the platform broadcast the chosen audiobook, and when the reading was complete would also share the "reading leader"'s commentary.

Tao Ran didn't listen very attentively. He only used the music playing in the background to block out the noise as he arranged his train of thoughts.

The taxi quickly drove onto a side road and was about to reach the City Bureau. Tao Ran was about to turn off the audiobook when he heard the concluding statement: "Well, having played the famous French author Stendhal's The Red and the Black for you to this point, next we'll share the commentary of the reading leader, whose ID is The Reciter."

This ID seemed to be a sudden bolt of lightning, instantly striking Tao Ran where he was—

Friday evening ought to have been pleasant and relaxed, a whole city full of people welcoming the weekend, but everyone at the City Bureau was either working overtime or on the road hurrying back to work overtime.

After receiving Tao Ran and Lang Qiao's phone calls, Luo Wenzhou couldn't sit still in the hospital anymore. His ideas just happened to coincide with Fei Du's—though President Fei didn't have anything to do; his main issues were that the public hospital had too many people, and the conditions were poor.

The two of them were for once of one mind, but their actions diverged: Fei Du quickly called his assistant and had her bring over a car, while Luo Wenzhou shamelessly hitched a ride.

It was already nearly ten. Lang Qiao sent Luo Wenzhou a message on WeChat, reporting the latest developments. He didn't speak for a good while.

After a long time, he finally opened his mouth and spoke without preamble: "The medical examiner's preliminary determination is that Chen Zhen died of a single drug overdose."

Having heard Luo Wenzhou's unilateral "chat" at the hospital, Fei Du more or less understood the circumstances in which his dear car had been scrapped. He knew who "Chen Zhen" was.

There was no smell of blood next to him, the temperature in the car was comfortable, and Fei Du had just eaten the midnight snack brought over by his assistant. He firmly stopped the car at a crosswalk to wait for the red light, taking this time to drink a few mouthfuls of banana milk to fill in the gaps. The banana milk made him very even-tempered. He answered, "That sounds a little strange—it doesn't seem very civilized."

Hearing the word "civilized," Luo Wenzhou shot him a look. "I don't dare to have such high expectations of criminals."

Fei Du said, "However bad a person is, he still wouldn't be willing to take just any desperate risk. For example, those people who wanted to wipe you out and finally turned to shooting up the street—that was because they had already exposed themselves in front of you. If you got away, they were done for—they only became frenzied because they were afraid of that outcome. There's causality there. They wouldn't devolve for no reason. True lunatics find it very hard to stay submerged in society for long."

On this point, great minds thought alike. Wu Xuechun had confirmed that Chen Zhen was "safe," and if the girl hadn't been lying, then it proved that at least as far as she had witnessed, the sub-bureau's captain and the others hadn't intended to kill him. Moreover, if they'd wanted to kill Chen Zhen in the first place, they never would have permitted Luo Wenzhou to talk so much nonsense with Wu Xuechun.

But Chen Zhen had died of a drug overdose, which didn't sound like an accidental death.

"They may have been the ones to inject the drugs," Fei Du said unhurriedly. "Although it strains the understanding that people who have regular contact with drugs wouldn't manage to control the dose and slip up and kill someone. If I were suspected of harboring a drug trafficking gang, and a stranger barged in and blindly started asking sensitive questions, I certainly wouldn't kill him without careful consideration."

Hearing his tone, which sounded like he was discussing the weather, Luo Wenzhou's scalp went numb. But at the same time, he still asked, "And then what?"

"Step one, control him. Suss out just how much he knows, how deep he's gotten, and whether there's anyone behind him prompting him. Then use drugs, force, threats, and other such means to chip away at his willpower. Once I understand that the victim has only started his contact with you and isn't altogether your informer, that he doesn't dare to trust you entirely, and moreover comes from a simple background and has no close connections, then I move on to step two." Fei Du continued his banana milk-scented speech: "Step two, use a very small dose of drugs to force him to develop an addiction, and while he's in a confused state, repeatedly inculcate the idea that it was you who sold him out. Brainwash him, make him believe that you're wallowing in the same muck as these people. This way, he'll easily become filled with despair and come to believe there's no such thing as so-called 'justice,' and for someone like him, the only means of survival is learning to compromise."

Luo Wenzhou looked at him for a while, then commented, "That's really sick."

Fei Du was unconcerned. He continued, "Step three, when he's already addicted, let him taste some benefits. Let him know we aren't so scary, that we're really humanitarians.—That will settle it, establishing two serious constraints on his mentality and physiology. Afterwards, this person will be mine to use. When you and your people come in full force to scoop him up, I only need to tell him that our two sides have just had a little conflict over splitting the profits unevenly and are in a mutual struggle right now. Carrying resentment towards you, he'll become a plant in your organization."

Perhaps it was because the atmosphere between the two of them had just eased, and perhaps it was because the scent of banana milk suffusing the inside of the car made it impossible to be serious—for the first time, on hearing this unique discourse of his, Luo Wenzhou didn't erupt. He was silent for a while, then suddenly said, "If you decide to break the law one day, we really may have a lot of trouble."

Fei Du made no comment and next heard Luo Wenzhou say, "But you're just saying that, and you're only saying it to me. You haven't put it into practice, and you haven't filled the world with Killing Without a Trace training programs, so my colleagues and I can occasionally have a little break from work and go on dates. Therefore I should thank you on behalf of the organization."

Fei Du: "..."

How come this reaction wasn't the same as usual?

Luo Wenzhou nodded to himself and very kindly said, "We should give you an extra silk banner. Is there anything else? Give us a consult."

Fei Du thereupon shut his mouth tightly and didn't utter so much as a punctuation mark all the way to Yan City's City Bureau.

At the City Bureau's gates, Luo Wenzhou had just stepped out of the car when a police car drove up and parked next to him; before it had come to a full stop, Lang Qiao ran over. "Chief, Ma Xiaowei is gone!"

"Don't shout." The wound on Luo Wenzhou's back had only just scabbed over. He was still somewhat immobilized. He used one hand to get out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth, then unhurriedly said, "It's a good thing that he's gone."

Lang Qiao's unusually large eyes widened two sizes as she stared at Luo Wenzhou. She opened her mouth and had yet to speak when her gaze suddenly went past Luo Wenzhou and fell on a place not far behind him. "Th-that's..."

Luo Wenzhou accordingly turned his head and saw that a cowering human figure had appeared across the street, sticking out his head in the direction of the City Bureau. Another person came over and led him across the street.

"Ma Xiaowei and the sub-bureau's crooked-legged Little Glasses!"

Xiao Haiyang had finally swapped out his broken glasses. The rather stiff square frames made him look a few years older. He led Ma Xiaowei across the street and in front of Luo Wenzhou. "Captain Luo."

Luo Wenzhou didn't seem at all surprised to see him. He nodded genially. "You're here? Do come in."

There wasn't a bit of weekend ambience inside the City Bureau. Those performing the autopsy, those examining the tie, those questioning the witnesses and interrogating the prisoners—the Criminal Investigation Team and the Forensics Department were so busy they were all over the place. Mother He, put up temporarily in the duty room, couldn't avoid being alarmed by this. At the least sign of disturbance, she anxiously stuck her head out to look.

When Ma Xiaowei and the others walked in, they saw Mother He hesitating in the corridor. She saw Luo Wenzhou, then transferred her doubtful gaze onto Ma Xiaowei.

"This is He Zhongyi's mother," Luo Wenzhou said to Ma Xiaowei.

Ma Xiaowei's already listless steps paused. He looked at her in terror.

The frail woman and the haggard teenager looked at each other helplessly. After a while, perhaps because the teenager's appearance had made her think of her son, Mother He tentatively asked Ma Xiaowei, "Do...do you know my son?"

Ma Xiaowei immediately backed up half a step.

"My Zhongyi is a good boy. You know him, don't you?" Mother He took half a step forward, looking ardently at Ma Xiaowei. As she looked at him, tears began to stream down her face. She straightened her neck and took a long, thin breath. "Who killed him? Huh? Child, you can tell Auntie. Who was it that killed him?"

Ma Xiaowei's eyes reddened. Without warning sign, he knelt on the floor with a thump.

"Me, it was me!" He began to wail. "I wronged Zhongyi-ge, I wronged you... I'm sorry..." 

CHAPTER 22 [Julien- Twenty One]

This was Ma Xiaowei's second time opening his mouth to accuse himself of killing someone in a Public Security Bureau. This ground-breaking teenager was wailing more powerfully than the victim's relation, nearly knocking his head against the floor. Two policemen next to him reacted, going over and pulling him up, drawing him away amidst Mother He's sorrowful cries.

Luo Wenzhou hadn't expected his casual introduction to precipitate such an event. His head swelled. He had a premonition that this would be a sleepless night. He had to quickly send his building's property manager a text message, imploring a serving of cat food for the starving and freezing Luo Yiguo.

Lang Qiao was about to lead Fei Du away to give a statement. Luo Wenzhou looked up and called him to a stop.

"Hey," said Luo Wenzhou, without appellation or inscription, "thank you."

Fei Du hadn't expected this person's dog mouth to sprout an elephant's tusk. He was rather taken aback. His steps paused. With the elegance of a president giving an inaugural speech, he very solemnly nodded. "You're welcome."

Luo Wenzhou appraisingly watched his model-like back out of the room, oddly reminded of a strutting poodle. He really wanted to chase after and put a walking stick in his hand. But after fighting for seven years, the two of them had only just seen the dawning light of a ceasefire, and Luo Wenzhou didn't want to go borrowing trouble. He therefore forced down all his marvelous ideas, turned and patted Xiao Haiyang on the shoulder. "Why don't you come with me."

Xiao Haiyang silently followed him to an individual interrogation room. Somewhat nervily pushing at his glasses, he looked directly at Luo Wenzhou. "I'm not here in the capacity of a police officer assisting with an investigation, am I?"

Luo Wenzhou gestured at Xiao Haiyang. "Please sit. Tell me, what capacity do you think you're here in?"

Xiao Haiyang didn't stand on ceremony. At his words, he sat down, very upright. "Am I a suspect or a witness?"

Luo Wenzhou laughed and according to habit crossed his legs and leaned back. The wound on his back immediately protested, shrieking towards his pain receptors, hurting so much he nearly . Luo Wenzhou forced himself to preserve his demeanor and awkwardly sat up properly, chattily asking, "How long have you been at work?"

"Two years...a year and half," said Xiao Haiyang.

"Oh, so you only finished your trial period recently, right?" Luo Wenzhou nodded, recalled for a moment, then continued, "When I was little, my dad originally wanted to have me test into the armed forces academy, but I was still going through my rebellious phase. Whatever he said, I did the opposite. I said, 'I'm not going to go study missiles in the Sahara,' then I ran back to school and submitted a bunch of forms. At the time I was very deeply impressed by Hong Kong gangster films and thought all policemen were like Tony Leung and Louis Koo, so I ended up in this line of work."

Xiao Haiyang very seriously responded, "The Sahara isn't in Chinese territory."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

This young person really knew how to talk.

Xiao Haiyang may also have noticed something off about this response. His posture became a little more tense. "Please go on."

Luo Wenzhou felt that Xiao Haiyang perhaps didn't even know how to say "relax," so he abandoned his efforts on that score and became businesslike, coming right to the point. "Anyway, you're a fellow professional who's performed meritorious work. Whether you're a witness or a suspect remains to be seen based on the outcome of the investigation.—You've already mentally prepared for that, and you've also prepared to divulge everything you know, is that right?"

Xiao Haiyang nodded.

"Good," said Luo Wenzhou. "I'll start from what's right in front of us, then. Why did you bring Ma Xiaowei here tonight?"

"Because there were people who wanted to kill him to silence him," Xiao Haiyang answered without pretending to take time to think about it. As he spoke, he fished a phone out of his pocket. It was already very properly sealed in an evidence bag. He passed it to Luo Wenzhou. "I was on duty tonight with another colleague. This is his phone. When this message came, he was asleep."

Luo Wenzhou scanned the text message through the clear bag. It matched what Lang Qiao had said. He put it aside. "Why would you read someone else's texts?"

Xiao Haiyang said, "I've been keeping watch on him."

This young man's speech was very fast, he didn't smile much, and when he spoke to people, his body language was always tense. From time to time he made little gestures like pushing at his glasses or clenching his fist. He didn't seem like an "experienced" adult, but rather like a middle school boy at the stage of development where his limbs were uncoordinated.

Looking at him, Luo Wenzhou felt that if you split Fei Du's oiliness and gave Xiao Haiyang half, the two of them would be just about normal.

"And why were you keeping watch on him?"

Xiao Haiyang pursed his lips. "Can I start at the beginning?"

Luo Wenzhou nodded, and Xiao Haiyang took a deep breath, considered for a moment, then began as if giving a careful and detailed analysis: "Our atmosphere there isn't much like it is here at the City Bureau. When there isn't an important occasion or some major case, we normally don't see Director Wang. If he has any orders for us, they go through Captain Huang—oh, that's the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team's leader. His full name is Huang Jinglian.

"Captain Huang's relationship with the deputy-captain isn't very good, but there are some colleagues in our department who are his confidants and 'protégés.' Sometimes there are things he'll just call his own people to handle, and other people won't know what they're up to. The deputy-captain has basically been undermined by him. He doesn't have any control.

"I'd always thought Captain Huang was picking out the best jobs for his favorites, which didn't bother me very much. Ever since I was little, those types of cliques haven't had anything to do with me. But then one day, one of the local police stations reported a case—they'd found a girl's body. It was just time for the night shift, and I should have been on duty. I was already prepared to set out, but a colleague stopped me... It was the owner of that phone. He said he had something to do at home the next day and asked if we could swap shifts. It's normal for us to privately swap shifts, so I didn't think much about it and agreed. In the end Captain Huang and that colleague went out to the scene."

"Huang Jinglian was there at the time?" Luo Wenzhou paused, then followed up, "What was the name of the girl who died?"

"Chen Yuan," said Xiao Haiyang.

Luo Wenzhou narrowed his eyes faintly. "Why do you remember it so clearly? Does Chen Yuan have some special meaning for you?"

"I remember most of what I see. I can still recite the license plate number of the police car you drove to the scene at the start of the '520' case, if you need..."

"..." Luo Wenzhou didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This Little Glasses' style simply didn't fit in at all with the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau's. He quickly waved his hand. "No need to recite it, I believe you. Go on."

Xiao Haiyang paused, then returned to the original topic. "There was actually something special about the victim. There was a photo of the body sent over. When she died, she was wearing an openwork blouse and a miniskirt, her face was thickly made-up—and the blouse was on backwards. There's a type of women's blouse that has the buttons on the back. If there's no collar, at first glance it's very easy to get the front and back mixed up. You only feel that the underarms and the neck aren't in the right place when you put it on. My first thought was that it was very possible someone had dressed her after she died. If that was true, then the case could involve a homicide. I particularly mentioned this point to my colleague when we changed shifts..."

Luo Wenzhou's fingers rapped lightly on the table. He didn't interrupt. He'd obtained the materials from Chen Yuan's case and clearly remembered that there had been nothing unusual about the clothing on the body. The blouse with the buttons on the back hadn't been on backwards.

"It was several days later when I found out the results of the investigation. Captain Huang and the others had determined that it was a case of a prostitute dying of a drug overdose. I went to ask that colleague for an explanation for the backwards blouse the victim was wearing. He hedged and just said I had seen wrong." At this point, Xiao Haiyang paused for a long moment. "I didn't save the photograph. I only looked at it quickly. It isn't as though I couldn't have seen wrong.—But that afternoon, a transfer of 2,000 yuan appeared on my salary card, and the text message note said it was a 'bonus'. Our wages aren't very high, everyone has families to feed, and their lives are stressful. When we get a bonus, there's sure to be a group celebration. The whole team's atmosphere is different. But this time, no one had mentioned it. Before I got off work, Captain Huang called me over and mentioned some routine work I'd done over the last few days. He said I was earnest and responsible, and he'd asked Director Wang to specially authorize the money to encourage an 'exemplar' who'd just started work. I thought this reason was very far-fetched and didn't touch that money, because I suspected it was 'hush money.'"

As soon as he heard this, Luo Wenzhou understood that this was in fact brazen hush money. "But you didn't have evidence. The concluding report for Chen Yuan's case was very clean. There were no weak points."

Xiao Haiyang's cheeks tightened, and he nodded rather unwillingly.

Luo Wenzhou let out a breath. "And then? That day at the crime scene, why did you hint to us that the place where we'd found the body wasn't the initial scene of the crime?"

"I thought Captain Huang and the others were up to something, so I thought it over and didn't disclose the matter of the bonus." Xiao Haiyang lifted his chin slightly, indicating the phone in the evidence bag next to Luo Wenzhou. "I looked for an opportunity to plant a virus on that colleague's phone, accessed his GPS, and kept track of his whereabouts every day."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Xiao Haiyang quickly explained, "I know that's against the law, but during training I barely scraped by on a lot of subjects. It wasn't realistic for me to try following them. I definitely would have been discovered at once. This was all I could do."

"No, I just didn't expect you to be so talented." Luo Wenzhou smiled. "What did you find?"

"After work he usually went to some entertainment centers. Besides that, every month on days that were multiples of five—the fifth, the tenth, the fifteenth, the twentieth, and so on—as long as he wasn't on duty, he would go to some fixed locations, including near the lot where He Zhongyi's body was found, and other fairly out-of-the-way places. I avoided him and the others and snuck over to investigate a couple of those places. I didn't turn anything up. But one time I pretend to be from out of town and asked for directions, and an old lady who lived nearby warned me not to go there after dark. She said there were sometimes 'people doing snow' there."

Luo Wenzhou said, "So what you're saying is, on the night of the twentieth, using the GPS, you determined that your colleague just happened to be at the place where He Zhongyi's body was found."

"After work, he left with Captain Huang and the others. I suspect Captain Huang and the others were also there then. The phone didn't show him leaving until almost eleven," said Xiao Haiyang. "Captain Luo, I think if we'd killed him ourselves, it would definitely be a bit more professional. It's not very likely that the body would have been so blatantly left there to cause such an irreparable uproar. Afterwards, Ma Xiaowei's appearance bore out my guesses—Captain Huang and the others had participated in certain business transactions at the scene that night, and in the process maybe there was some kind of quarrel that the neighbors overheard. Ma Xiaowei was there, too. And none of them saw how the body appeared there."

Luo Wenzhou listened, nodded, and made no comment. He only suddenly asked, "Where were you on the night of the twentieth?"

"I was on duty at the bureau, working the night shift. There's the duty log and the security camera footage." Xiao Haiyang's expression didn't flicker; he wasn't upset at all by Luo Wenzhou's blunt question. He very calmly and impressively said, "You suspect that I'm the one who dumped the body? I'm not. The West District's roads are complicated. If you want to dump a body there without anyone being the wiser, first you have to be very familiar with the surroundings, and then you have to have a means of transportation. I only recently got my driver's license, and I don't have a car yet."

Luo Wenzhou's expression was cool. It was unclear whether he believed this or not. Then he asked, "Now, have you...ever heard of the 'Golden Triangle Lot'?"

"Ma Xiaowei says, this so-called 'Golden Triangle Lot' is that very bit of ground where He Zhongyi's body was found. It's one of the places where they normally do business. Only people who regularly participate in the transactions know that name. It's strictly forbidden to share it." Tao Ran hurriedly left the interrogation room and tossed his notes onto a table. He said to Lang Qiao, "That bastard Luo Wenzhou, investigating something this big on his own without so much as a heads up. Does he think he's Captain America?"

Lang Qiao curiously asked, "So did Ma Xiaowei really kill He Zhongyi?"

"It doesn't seem like it to me. Ma Xiaowei says that after he got addicted, he was often strapped for cash. The people around him all knew about his problem and wouldn't leave money lying around the apartment. Ma Xiaowei set his eyes on He Zhongyi's new phone and snatched it for his own benefit. He was just about to go out to transact business when He Zhongyi got home from work and happened to think of the phone. He couldn't find it and questioned him. Ma Xiaowei is like a person possessed; he firmly denied everything. Finally, the two of them parted on bad terms.—Xiao Qiao, give me a bottle of water, I haven't had a break all evening." Tao Ran took the bottle of water, drank half of it in one go, then took a breath. "That night Ma Xiaowei exchanged He Zhongyi's phone for drugs and was very pleased with himself, thinking that when He Zhongyi got back and searched his things, there'd be nothing he could say. But the outcome was that He Zhongyi didn't come back, and just happened to die in that place."

"So Ma Xiaowei thinks that He Zhongyi somehow happened to see him selling the phone and got killed because he was trying to get his stuff back?" Lang Qiao's big eyes turned, and she quickly caught up. "Then afterwards, because of that fight among the common people, we got some unexpected testimony, and to cover up the truth, Director Wang planted that phone to frame him? So once and for all, who killed He Zhongyi?"

Tao Ran didn't answer; his phone was ringing. The call was from the Forensic Department's landline. He quickly picked it up. "Hello, how is it?"

The person on the line said something that Lang Qiao didn't hear clearly. She saw Tao Ran's face grow increasingly grave. Then he hung up the phone and asked her, "Has Fei Du left?" 

CHAPTER 23 [Julien- Twenty Two]

Luo Wenzhou was just opening the door on his way in, pondering with his head down as he went. Only when he heard Tao Ran's words did he look up in surprise. "What's wrong now?"

Tao Ran didn't have attention to spare to wrangle over the cancer of heroism with "Captain China" Luo. Frowning, he said, "The tie Attorney Liu brought over has Zhang Donglai's fingerprints on it. The preliminary determination is that it matches the strangulation marks on the victim's neck. There are some small bloodstains on it—some skin broke on He Zhongyi's neck when he was strangled. Working overtime, the DNA test results can be ready by tomorrow morning at the earliest. The medical examiners say it's very likely that this is the murder weapon."

Luo Wenzhou listened silently. Then he looked up at the clock; it was close to midnight.

"Go after him," he said. "I figure Fei Du hasn't left, and if he has, it was only just now. We can catch up."

Fei Du in fact hadn't left.

After giving his statement, he'd gone to sit with Mother He again.

Perhaps it was because there was someone with her, and perhaps because the sight of the City Bureau all lit up in the middle of the night had given Mother He a bit of hope—her mood had steadied considerably. She could even voluntarily exchange a few words with Fei Du. "Before you came, I think I saw that man from this afternoon, that...what's his name?"

She meant Attorney Liu, but she couldn't remember what he did, stalled for a moment, found that the inside of her head was a ball of paste and simply passed over it. She asked, "Have they found new evidence?"

Mother He was sitting in a comfortable chair, but President Fei wasn't so comfortable. He had nowhere to put his legs, and this young master wasn't willing to ruin his image by curling up, so he could only sit twisted into an upright position to one side. His legs soon started to go numb, and he couldn't resist tapping on them. "Could be.—What are your plans once they've caught the killer? Will you go back home?"

Mother He's eyelids drooped. She didn't answer, only glanced at his hand tapping his leg and said, "You aren't with the police, right? It's very late. You should hurry home."

Aside from his numb legs, Fei Du in fact didn't feel tired at all. For young loiterers, this was when the nightlife was just getting started; it was the time he was most alert.

Unfortunately, there were no beauties around today; his only companion was a skinny, dried-up middle-aged woman. Despite that, Fei Du's treatment of great beauties and middle-aged women was indiscriminately good—from ten thousand flowers and grasses he had even cultivated some grades that didn't have a trace of lewdness to them.

"It's no problem. I'll stay with you a while," Fei Du told her. "My mother passed away when I was little. While she was alive, she was always taking medicine for her illness and couldn't go out and work. My father was busy with work and rarely came home. I was attending school then; my school was far from home, and I lived with a housekeeper near the school. I only came home once a week to see her."

Mother He looked Fei Du over somewhat bashfully. "Such a good-looking young fellow, your mother must have been crazy about you, looked forward to you coming home every day.—If a mother has no skills of her own, then the only thing she has left to look forward to every day is seeing her children."

After he heard this, Fei Du smiled at her without turning a hair. "Yeah."

He looked up and saw Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran coming over, both their faces looking worn from working overtime. Tao Ran waved him over from a few steps away.

Fei Du unhurriedly walked over and smiled at Tao Ran, showing his teeth. "Ge, how did the date go?"

Fei Du's sense of propriety was comprehensive. He'd said he would change, so even his manner of address and body language changed completely; he'd said he would no longer make trouble, so he wasn't. He'd changed completely in an instant, becoming a close but properly-behaved brother.

"Don't mention it." Tao Ran waved his hand expressively and looked at the staring Mother He, indicating that Fei Du should go with them to one side. "Come over here for a moment. There are some things I need you to confirm."

"What's the matter?" Fei Du said languidly as he walked. "Have you finally realized that there's no future in being a policeman? I've always said that even the person selling youtiao in my company's building's dining hall gets paid more than your captain."

Stuck full of pins at every opportunity without even having made a sound, Captain Luo was so wronged that all he could feel was hunger. He ungraciously called over the officer on duty and gave him some money. "Go to the twenty-four hour shop and buy some youtiao."

Mother He craned her neck, watching Fei Du as he walked away. She was sitting in a corner. Her tears had dried, and a clear film had formed over her eyes, reflecting the cold city and the cold night.

Suddenly, her phone rang. It was a piece of trash that had been knocked off the market by the many types of smart phones long ago. The only function it had was receiving phone calls.

She shivered and answered in a flurry. "Hello?"

Whispery static came over the phone, followed by a strange voice. "Did you see that lawyer? He took money to speak for those young masters, but he couldn't stand the condemnation of his conscience and came over there in the middle of the night to make a report. Now the police know for certain who the murderer is. They must be very busy now, right? Conclusive evidence is hard to cover up.—Are you willing to trust me now?"

Mother He's chapped lips trembled. Almost inaudibly, she said, "Who are you?"

"I'm the one helping you," the strange voice said. "Outside matters are too complicated. You don't understand anything about them. They're only being nice to you because they're afraid you'll go out and blab. The murderer has connections, so they don't dare to arrest him."

Mother He's eyes opened wide bit by bit.

The strange voice asked, "Are you ready?"

At the same time, Tao Ran brought Fei Du straight to his own office, fished out some close-up photographs and, cutting right to the chase, pointed at the striped silver-gray tie on them. "Have you ever seen this tie?"

Fei Du glanced at it. "It's a popular design. Everyone has one."

"Does Zhang Donglai have one?" said Tao Ran.

Fei Du froze, the joking smile mostly falling from his face. "What does that mean?"

Looking on, Luo Wenzhou found that this brat really was astute; too bad he didn't put it to use in the proper places. "Exactly what you think it does."

Fei Du hesitated, took the photographs and looked at them carefully for a while. "He does have one of this brand. If I recall correctly, it was a gift from Zhang Ting. You can see it doesn't fit Zhang Donglai's style, so he normally only wears it when he's playing around at his dad's company. One time someone else saw it and made fun of him for ages. Lao Zhang may be unreliable, but he does love Zhang Ting. He complains about it every day, but he still can't bear to throw it away.—What's wrong with this tie?"

"This tie was found in the crack between the seats of Zhang Donglai's car. It has his fingerprints. We suspect it's the murder weapon," Tao Ran said, lowering his voice. "Help us with a few things—on the night of May 20th at Chengguang Mansion, was Zhang Donglai wearing this tie?"

"He wasn't," said Fei Du. "That should show up on the security camera footage?"

Tao Ran then asked, "The twentieth was a working day. Could he have worn it during the day, then taken it off at night and put it in his car or his pocket?"

"I don't know about that." Fei Du frowned slightly, then, as if he'd thought of something, asked, "Are Zhang Donglai's fingerprints the only ones on the tie?"

Tao Ran's expression flickered slightly; that was enough for Fei Du to read the answer.

He stood in silence for a while, the smiling expression that seemed to have grown along with the corners of his eyes and the tips of his brows cooling. Then he slowly spoke. "Zhang Donglai can't be the killer. If his fingerprints are the only ones on the tie, it clearly shows that when the killer took that tie, whether he stole it or just picked it up, he was already planning to use it to implicate him."

His voice was leisurely, his tone no different from his usual one, but Tao Ran, bewildered, sensed his veiled temper.

Starting from the time Tao Ran had called him to ask for Zhang Donglai's alibi, Fei Du had displayed the indifference of an outsider. Even afterwards, when he'd twice accompanied Zhang Ting to the City Bureau, he was purely accompanying her, purely going through the motions, a mere drinking buddy through and through.

He hadn't gotten worked up trying to defend Zhang Donglai. He hadn't even asked of his own initiative what their investigation had turned up, whether Zhang Donglai had been entirely cleared of suspicion.

"I never expected you to get angry on Zhang Donglai's behalf. I thought..." Tao Ran was somewhat taken aback. He considered his wording. "I didn't think you were on such good terms with him? It looked at first like you weren't taking this so much to heart."

"I'm not angry. I just think that some people have been rather too thorough." Fei Du tilted his head and smiled at him, seeming warm and calm, then made a slip of the tongue: "Give me some coffee-flavored sesame oil to help me focus."

Tao Ran: "..."

The "not angry" President Fei's expression was frank; he had entirely failed to notice he'd said anything wrong.

When Fei Du, frowning, had drained a cup of instant coffee with an expression of deepest suffering, he let out a breath and spoke. "When you released Zhang Donglai, saying that there was insufficient evidence, you actually already had evidence showing he wasn't under suspicion. Is that right?"

Tao Ran froze.

But next to him Luo Wenzhou nodded. "Right.—The DNA on those cigarette ends you sent over really was He Zhongyi's. We followed up on that lead and found that he'd gotten on a bus and left Chengguang Mansion to go somewhere else. He wasn't killed at the club. Zhang Donglai was still making merry in Chengguang Mansion at the time. His alibi is fairly solid. We didn't clarify this when we set him free because I had a feeling that the murderer was following this case closely. If we released Zhang Donglai so ambiguously, he would definitely have a next move. And sure enough, he delivered this tie to us."

"If he's someone who can closely follow the case and plant the murder weapon in Zhang Donglai's car without being suspected, then the murderer must be among those of us who came to pick up Zhang Donglai when he got out of the 'little dark room.' Aside from Zhang Ting and Attorney Liu, all those people also just happened to be at Chengguang Mansion that night." Fei Du stretched out his legs, half-leaning and half-sitting on Tao Ran's desk. "Among us, the one most concerned with the case, the most implicated, must be me. Am I under a lot of suspicion?"

"Not much," Luo Wenzhou answered without pausing to think. "Earlier you couldn't find north in the West District's heap of little alleys. The degree of difficulty involved in tossing a corpse there would be a little high for you."

Fei Du: "..."

Luo Wenzhou said, "That's enough, President Fei. I know you're 'both wealthy and virtuous' and can afford to eat youtiao. The silk banner's on its way. Stop throwing a tantrum and speak sensibly."

Tao Ran looked from one to the next. He was slightly appalled. He had no idea what had happened while he'd been away from his post for the time it took to have dinner.

Fei Du stared at Luo Wenzhou expressionlessly for a while; perhaps he was internally cutting him to pieces. He managed to maintain his bearing and said seriously, "Aside from me, the one who most clearly understands the circumstances of the case must be Attorney Liu. The whole affair of the tie may have been staged by him. But he never had any contact with Zhang Donglai before, and it would have been very hard for him to get ahold of Lao Zhang's tie to use as a murder weapon.—Attorney Liu reports directly to Zhang Ting, and Zhang Ting fits the above requirements better. Also, she came into close contact with the deceased He Zhongyi. You need to go investigate her alibi for that night."

He paused for a moment. "There's also a fourth person: Zhang Ting's boyfriend, Zhao Haochang. He's a fairly well-known legal advisor, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. He was the one who recommended Attorney Liu to Zhang Ting, and he came with her today. On the night of the murder, he was at Chengguang Mansion and left after the dinner party—"

"You're sure he left after the dinner party," said Luo Wenzhou.

The corners of Fei Du's lips twitched ambiguously. "What do you think? Would you participate in the 'midnight performances' in front of your future brother-in-law?"

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Little whelp!

Fei Du said, "Can you tell me approximately where He Zhongyi went after he left the Chengguang Mansion?"

Tao Ran looked at Luo Wenzhou, saw Luo Wenzhou nod slightly, then said, "He got off the bus at Wenchang Intersection. After that we lost track of him."

Fei Du got a leather card case out of his pocket, flipped through it, and pulled out a business card:

Rongshun Law Firm (Yan City) Office

Zhao Haochang (Partner, 2nd Level)

Address: Third Floor, Jinlong Center, 103 Wenchang Street, Anping District, Yan City

Tao Ran stood up at once. "It's him!"

But Luo Wenzhou lightly scratched his chin, having a premonition that this matter wasn't necessarily going to be as simple as it seemed.

"Don't rush," he said. "We don't have enough evidence. He Zhongyi got off the bus at Wenchang Intersection, so a lawyer who works on Wenchang Street must be the murderer? There's no logical link there.—What else is there?"

"When He Zhongyi had just arrived in Yan City, a mysterious individual gave him 100,000 yuan," said Fei Du. "If that person was Zhao Haochang, then they obviously must have had some prior connection. Considering that He Zhongyi had left home for the first time to look for work, Zhao Haochang may have been to his hometown. Give He Zhongyi's mom his photograph and let her take a look."

Luo Wenzhou picked up his phone and dialed Lang Qiao. "Big Eyes, is He Zhongyi's mother still waiting for the results? If she hasn't gone to rest, ask her to come over to the office for a moment."

Lang Qiao gave an affirmative.

Fifteen minutes later, Luo Wenzhou had reviewed all the leads afresh and Lang Qiao still hadn't come with Mother He. He looked up, eyelid involuntarily twitching.

Just then, Lang Qiao ran in breathlessly. "Chief, He Zhongyi's mother isn't in the bureau. I don't know where she went!" 

CHAPTER 24 [Julien- Twenty Three]

"Strange. I checked all the bathrooms. No one saw when she left... Hey, chief, what's wrong?"

"Review the security cameras. Go." Luo Wenzhou's thinking had yet to come clear, but he already felt a chill arising from intuition climbing up his spine. "Hurry!"

Lang Qiao stared for an instant, then turned and ran.

The security camera footage was quickly reviewed. What it showed was very clear: after Fei Du stood up and left, Mother He received a phone call. The person on the phone said something that in a few words turned her into a human stone. The duration of the phone call was about two minutes. Afterwards, Mother He stared emptily for a while. Then she stood and wavered for a moment, looking several times in the direction Fei Du had gone, but he didn't return.

She lowered her head in disappointment, then seemed to come to a decision. She noiselessly left the City Bureau.

The security cameras extended to the City Bureau's gates where Mother He, without the least hesitation, quickly crossed the road. She came to an intersection and turned. After that there was no trace of her.

There was no need for Luo Wenzhou to issue an order; Lang Qiao at once took people to follow Mother He's path around the corner, where they split up to search.

"I just went to ask Xiao Haiyang," said Tao Ran, quickly walking over. "After the sub-bureau picked her up from the train station, they immediately brought her here to us on Wang Hongliang's orders. She hasn't left since she came. She can't be very familiar with Yan City, but the camera at the gates shows that when she went out the main doors she didn't look left or right, just went right across the street and turned. I think there was definitely someone waiting for her there."

Luo Wenzhou said, "Review all the security cameras near the intersection, look into each car and pedestrian that went by during that period."

"What a mess. There's been the traffic restriction these last few days." Tao Ran sighed. "The restricted cars can only go out on the road between midnight and three in the morning. Many people have no choice but to drive at night for one reason or another, so the roads aren't as tranquil as normal. It would take a long time to look into all of them. It's all right if nothing happens to her, but if..."

Luo Wenzhou paced a few circles without making a sound. Suddenly, his steps paused, his memory finally catching up to him—Luo Wenzhou finally remembered where the heavy disquiet he'd just felt had come from.

"...make him believe that you're wallowing in the same muck as these people."

"He'll easily become filled with despair and come to believe there's no such thing as so-called 'justice.'"

"That will settle it, establishing two serious constraints on his mentality and physiology."

How had the person who had called Mother He managed to convince a fretful, timid woman to leave the City Bureau in the dead of night?

Did she think that person was more worthy of trust than the City Bureau's criminal policemen?

Or...did she not trust the police at all?

Had she also thought that there was no such thing as so-called "justice," lost hope, and gone to use her own methods to seek the "justice" she wanted?

He swiftly turned to look at Fei Du.

Fei Du had his head lowered, his hair hanging down and blocking his face. Against his black shirt, all his exposed skin looked unusually pale, like a vampire that had never seen the light. There was a moment when Luo Wenzhou thought, Why does he understand these people so well?

When he wasn't mixed up with those rich kids who thought they were a law unto themselves, when he was alone—what did he think about?

Just then, Fei Du suddenly opened his mouth. As if speaking to himself, he said, "And I didn't hear it."

"What?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"I asked her, 'What are your plans once they've caught the killer?' She didn't answer, only told me to go home—"

She'd also said: "If a mother has no skills of her own, then the only thing she has left to look forward to every day is seeing her child."

This woman hardly had any ability to work. She was a useless person, crushed by disease. Wasn't her son the only part of her whole life that she could look forward to?

Now that her son was gone, what did she have left to do?—What else could she do?

Fei Du lightly pinched the skin between his brows together as if in self-mockery. When he turned his head, the corners of his lips quickly twitched upwards in a bitter false smile. Almost inaudibly, he spoke to himself again. "And I...I didn't even hear what she meant."

Tao Ran acutely picked up that there was something off about him and quickly asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Fei Du looked at him and, as if nothing was the matter, asked in turn, "Why do you ask?"

Tao Ran said, "While a case is going on, our lines of sight are usually concentrated on the deceased and the suspects. It's really normal to overlook the victim's relatives, especially when it gets busy. It's natural. The crucial thing now is to find where she is."

Fei Du nodded composedly. "Yes, that's right."

"Does she still think that Zhang Donglai is the killer? That we only released him because we're abusing our power to protect the Director-General's nephew?" Tao Ran asked. "Would she have gone to find Zhang Donglai? Do we need to call him?"

"You can call Zhang Donglai to remind him to be careful, but I think she wouldn't have." Luo Wenzhou pressed one hand against his temple and in doing so touched a bruise at the corner of his forehead. He sucked in a sharp breath. "What's the use of her going to find Zhang Donglai? Kill him to make him pay with his life? Given Zhang Donglai's physique, if he stood still and let her stab him, there's no guarantee that she'd have the strength to do it. The greatest likelihood is that they'd call the police, and we'd bring her right back here. It's a useless effort. Think about it from the murderer's point of view. He can't be staying up late just to take He Zhongyi's mother out for a stroll."

Just then, Fei Du, who had been uncommunicative all this time, picked up a gel pen.

"If the person who took her is the murderer," said Fei Du, quickly writing the date "5/20" on a piece of paper, "then first of all, when the murderer killed He Zhongyi, was it on the spur of the moment, or was it premeditated?"

Having said this, without waiting for the others to answer, he answered himself. "I incline towards thinking it was 'on the spur of the moment'—because on the night he was killed, He Zhongyi asked around about Chengguang Mansion's precise location."

Luo Wenzhou asked, "How do you know?"

"I saw He Zhongyi at the café where he was delivering goods and happened to hear. I'm sorry, I didn't hide it on purpose. I just thought it was a detail that could be overlooked."

Luo Wenzhou didn't follow this up. He nodded. "That makes sense. If the murderer had already wanted to kill He Zhongyi that night, he wouldn't have been vague about the address."

Tao Ran didn't know why the two of them were going back and forth like this. He was a little bewildered and was just about to speak when Luo Wenzhou waved a hand at him. "Let's perform a simple analysis of the suspect.

"The security camera footage shows that He Zhongyi received a phone call, then left Chengguang Mansion, heading for Wenchang Street. It looks like someone arranged to meet him. At that time, the murderer must have already known that he was outside the mansion. What would they have said on the phone?"

Fei Du slightly closed his eyes, lightly tapping the desk with the shaft of the pen. "No one saw me, I wasn't caught on the security cameras, I just want to talk to you—"

"For some reason, the murderer decided to kill He Zhongyi," said Luo Wenzhou. "According to our inferences just now, since it was on the spur of the moment, it isn't very likely that he had the murder weapon ready—most likely, that fool Zhang Donglai took off his tie and tossed it somewhere, and the murderer happened to see it. He had a flash of brilliance and thought of a very clever plan. Now, the second question is, why did he arrange to meet the victim there—at Wenchang Street?"

Tao Ran thought about it. "If the murderer is Zhao Haochang, Wenchang Street is where he works. It's easier to operate in familiar surroundings."

"Wenchang Street isn't the only place he's familiar with. If it was only to get a sense of security, wouldn't somewhere near his home be better?" Luo Wenzhou slowly crossed his arms and met Fei Du's eyes. He found that the expression in them was very cold, so cold it was as if they were made of inorganic matter. He didn't avert his gaze; looking straight at Fei Du, he asked, "What's your view?"

"I've dug a hole and put a scapegoat into it. Now, of course, I need to exclude myself—" Fei Du said, "It's for his alibi."

Tao Ran after all wasn't Captain China, who became more vigorous the more he got sliced up, and he wasn't a nocturnal youth. Now that it was the latter half of the night, he was physically very weary. His head, having had a big pile of information stuffed into it, had been mixed up into a pot of porridge. "Slow down, slow down. How does the alibi work? We clearly saw He Zhongyi go to Wenchang Street..."

Luo Wenzhou lit a cigarette, turned his back and sucked in two mouthfuls, then stretched out his arm to let the smoke float out the door as much as possible. In a slightly muffled voice, he said, "Tao Ran, did you forget that us finding that security camera footage was 'an accident?'"

Tao Ran gave a start.

That was right—that night, He Zhongyi had carefully avoided the security cameras, but he had underestimated how much rich people feared death. Aside from the obvious security cameras, the paths outside of Chengguang Mansion also had some hidden cameras.

The one that had captured him was among these, a camera in a treetop camouflaged to look like a bird's nest.

Neither he nor the murderer had known about the eternally recorded scene, and the police had only made it to the bus stop by following this accidental camera's lead, then traced the direction He Zhongyi had gone in.

The East Flower Market District had too many security cameras of all kinds: public ones, transportation ones, business ones, private ones... There was no exception: if you didn't already know when a person had gone by a certain street, it was unrealistic to review them one by one.

"He could have chosen a companion and found some excuse, for example that he'd 'had a bit to drink,' gotten a ride with that person back to his office. Then he'd have found some work and called one or more underlings to work overtime—that's normal in a law firm, no one would think there was anything wrong. As a second-level partner, he'd have his own office. While the others were busy, he could slip away and use his scapegoat's tie to kill He Zhongyi, hide the body, then come back to the office, acting like he'd just gone to the bathroom." Fei Du drew a complete circle on the piece of paper. "Like this, he'd have complete proof. 'I went back to the office with so-and-so, then I was at the office working the whole time.' If you hadn't happened to trace He Zhongyi, then the murderer's alibi would have been virtually unassailable."

"He Zhongyi's body turned up in the West Flower Market District, and the primary suspect Zhang Donglai was in the East Flower Market District that day." Luo Wenzhou quickly understood his implication. "The murderer has tossed out his trump card of the tie. In order to make sure his alibi is 'unassailable,' his next step ought to be to eliminate He Zhongyi's mother, who could expose his identity. At the same time, he'll continue to reinforce our idea that the murder occurred in the Flower Market District—therefore, it's likely that the murderer would take He Zhongyi's mother to the Flower Market District!"

Tao Ran was already contacting the policemen out searching for Mother He. "All sections take note, the search will focus on the Flower Market District—Fei Du, the West District or the East District?"

Fei Du was silent a moment. "East District."

Luo Wenzhou looked up. "Why?"

"The visual impact will be stronger. It'll be better able to compel you to arrest Zhang Donglai again. Also..." Fei Du said quietly. "I have an intuition."

Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran stood up at the same time.

Fei Du calmly raised his eyes. "Can I come with you?"

Luo Wenzhou hesitated for a moment. "Come on." 

CHAPTER 25 [Julien- Twenty Four]

Wang Xiujuan, female, Han ethnicity, forty-eight years old; educational record: elementary school drop-out; the mother of He Zhongyi, the victim in the "520" case.

Her husband had died in an accident ten years earlier, and she herself had then suffered serious illness. She basically had no ability to work, ordinarily relying on a little hand basket-weaving and the negligible rent from 2 mu of arable land to survive. Before coming to Yan City, the furthest she had gone had been to the hospital in the provincial capital.

The first time in her life that she came to Yan City, it was because she had been parted from her only child forever.

Apart from this, in everything that concerned her, there was basically nothing special worth mentioning.

As far as her tangible and intangible happiness, her anger, grief, and joy, whether there were any expectations or desires in her unremarkable life—it wasn't to be thought of.

"Continue investigating any suspicious cars that passed near the City Bureau.—Have you located her phone?"

"Captain Luo, her phone was in a garbage can not far from the City Bureau's gates."

Luo Wenzhou picked up the walkie-talkie, opened his mouth, then put the walkie-talkie back down; he had nothing to say—fair enough; as far as she was concerned, in all of this enormous city, aside from the mysterious individual who had kidnapped her, the only people who would call her number were swindlers and telemarketers.

Luo Wenzhou somewhat irritably stepped on the gas. "Why? What's the murderer's motive? Can the sudden impulse to murder have such long aftereffects? To tell you the truth, I'm starting to doubt your inferences—also, if the murderer is this Zhao Haochang, why would he dump the body in the West District? If he wanted to frame Zhang Donglai, wouldn't leaving the body directly at Chengguang Mansion's door be better?"

The person next to him didn't respond. Luo Wenzhou glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw that Fei Du was lost in thought. His unblinking gaze was fixed on the road through the windshield. Aside from his fingers tapping a 4/4 beat on his knee, he hadn't moved in a long time.

Luo Wenzhou rudely tapped him on the head. "Hey, I'm talking to you!"

Fei Du: "..."

President Fei had reached his present age without anyone having dared to touch his precious head—and touching it was one thing; there was also the "slapping" method of touching.

For a time he seemed not quite to know how he should react. He turned his head to stare at this extremely audacious human, his expression a little scary.

Luo Yiguo stared at him every day conspiring at his murder, so Luo Wenzhou didn't care about this "death ray." Not wavering from his intent, he continued to ask, "Is there a possibility that the person who dumped the body in the West District and the murderer who killed He Zhongyi aren't the same person at all?"

The tips of Fei Du's eyebrows moved slightly; just when Luo Wenzhou thought he was sinking into another round of thought, he answered, treasuring words like gold: "Yes."

"Which is the greater possibility?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"It depends on whether there are any other clues." Fei Du's backwards biological clock seemed to have returned to the right path—as if he was finally somewhat weary, he lowered his head and forcefully pinched the bridge of his nose. "Looking only at the facts I know, I could be convinced of either possibility."

"If the person who dumped the body and the murderer aren't the same person, the possibilities are too numerous," said Luo Wenzhou. "Let's not discuss that for now. If the person who dumped the body is the murderer, then what's the logic of dumping the body in the West District?"

Fei Du opened his eyes. His already generously-sized eyelids pulled into two thick layers, pressing heavily on the rims of his eyes.

He considered, then mildly said, "Based on previous inferences, the murderer must have been acquainted with He Zhongyi. When the police work a case, you'll ordinarily start by investigating the victim's social relationships. Therefore, he was very likely at risk. Especially at risk of having some things that he'd very carefully hidden unearthed in the process.—Why the West District? Think about it from the other direction. If it hadn't been those selfie-taking maniacs who found the body, then...it's possible it wouldn't have been found."

Perhaps he would have ended up like Chen Yuan. Even though his body was left out in public, in the end it would all have come to nothing.

Fei Du paused, then continued, "And in case something unexpected happened, the first firewall failed and the body was discovered, the police force would begin investigating the case according to conventional lines of thought. So he set up a second firewall—Zhang Donglai. Zhang Donglai had recently had a clash with the victim and belonged to the 'shallow social relationships' category; a rough search would turn him up. And once the police had someone seriously under suspicion, you would concentrate the bulk of the investigation on him, and would cease or slow down probing into the victim's other social relationships. Owing to Zhang Donglai's special position, whether you investigated him or protected him, it would all blow up in your faces if you messed it up. Wrangling that would be enough to keep you busy. Where would you find the time to explore who else a kid from the countryside knew?"

Luo Wenzhou was silent—their investigation really had followed this line of thought.

Fei Du shifted as if he'd become uncomfortable from sitting too long, absently looking out the car window at the scenery rapidly falling back outside. The rows of street lamps turned the spiraling overpasses into an elegant, winding panorama. The first inklings of the East Flower Market District's nightless sky of fiery trees and silver flowers were already appearing far off. Perhaps it was his mistaken impression, but it seemed that tonight, the huge LED screen of the East District's Canopy of Heaven corridor was even brighter than usual.

Luo Wenzhou looked at him and suddenly asked, "Are you all right?"

Fei Du expressionlessly asked in turn, "What could be wrong with me?"

Luo Wenzhou thought about it, then bluntly pointed out, "Then how come you're suddenly being so kindly and gentle to me?"

For a moment Fei Du was speechless. "I'm sorry, Captain Luo. I didn't know you liked it rough."

Then both of them turned silent, feeling that there had been something a little off about these words.

Fei Du thought, Don't I have anything better to do?

Luo Wenzhou meanwhile reacted half a beat late. The little whelp was flirting with him!

And he was doing it in the tone of taking a dig!

"Accounting for the mental state of the officers working the case, kidnapping someone from the City Bureau—if we don't consider the possibility that this is the work of a gang, then I think this person must have a record." Fei Du turned his head, raptly staring at the East Flower Market District drawing ever nearer, wrenching the subject away in feigned amnesia.

"What kind of record?"

"The kind that was never discovered—only having a crime buried in the ground could foster this kind of insane narcissistic pride."

A string of police cars drove into the commercial center and quickly dispersed, focusing their search on the area around Chengguang Mansion, the central square, and the places where He Zhongyi had delivered goods.

"What the hell." Lang Qiao's voice came over the walkie-talkie through heavy interference. "Is President Fei there? Listen, do you guys normally have so many night owls walking around in the dead of night over here?"

Fei Du was also bewildered. Aside from the bar and private club crowd, at this hour, everyone else would normally have stopped. Even on the weekend there was rarely such a commotion.

"Wenzhou." Tao Ran came on. "The guys reviewing the security camera footage found a suspicious car. It had a logo on it that looked like it came from a certain rather irregular private car rental company. They've just found the person in charge of the company. Their operations are very irregular, they didn't notice that the recorded identity didn't match the person—"

"And whose is the recorded identity?"

"He Zhongyi's." Tao Ran sighed. "About fifteen minutes ago, the rental car drove into the commercial center... Hey—"

Without any warning, a round of applause burst out all around, abruptly cutting off Tao Ran's words.

Luo Wenzhou stopped the car at the side of the road and got out to look. He saw the flowing lights and colors on the Canopy of Heaven condense, then explode into an enormous countdown display: five minutes.

The Canopy of Heaven itself was an enormous LED screen, half of it on the buildings next to it. It was like a blanket flowing down. It formed a corridor about three floors off the ground and parallel to it. There were images on both sides—whether you were in the central square or in the surrounding buildings, you would be able to see the scrolling images.

Someone explained over the walkie-talkie: "Chief, apparently the closing ceremony rehearsal is going on over at the conference hall tonight. The observation deck at the Economic and Trade Building is a first-rate lookout point; all the LED screens here are going to play a live broadcast."

"Whatever," said Luo Wenzhou. "How is the investigation going in the areas we're focusing on?"

"There's nothing around Chengguang Mansion. We've asked several security guards who all say they haven't seen her. We can't get the security camera footage. They're saying it's private property, so if we want to get the footage we'll need to have a warrant."

"There are too many people in the square. We're asking one by one."

"The coffee shops are all closed, and there's no one around—we'll go follow his usual delivery route."

"Captain Luo, we haven't located that car yet. We're expanding the scope of our search."

The sound of everyone reporting at once poured into Luo Wenzhou's ears. He quickly arranged them in order of priority and was about to issue orders when he saw Fei Du suddenly get out of the car, gazing at the countdown on the Canopy of Heaven above his head with a frightening expression—it was already at four minutes and forty seconds.

Luo Wenzhou stared. "What's wrong?"

"In order for a method of suicide to attract notice, it has to make a big stir. Ordinarily it's at some symbolic location or somewhere crowded." Fei Du's eyes slowly opened wide. "Under everyone's gaze, how could you make it so everyone can see, but no one has time to stop it?"

Luo Wenzhou looked up at once. The East District's high-rises stood like trees in a forest, like fish scales and comb teeth, pointing at the sky. Looking up at them from below was almost dizzying. The countdown had fireworks expanding and contracting in the background, the constantly shifting rich colors setting off the brief time on the display.

"There are seven or eight skyscrapers here and countless other buildings..." Luo Wenzhou grabbed Fei Du's shoulder. "Which building's rooftop will she be on?"

Fei Du's face looked as though it had been smeared with white paint.

Luo Wenzhou realized at once that he'd asked a ridiculous question—Fei Du wasn't an immortal.

He grabbed his walkie-talkie, running in long-legged strides towards the nearest trade building. "All groups take note, immediately start searching all the rooftops!"

Fei Du had an intense feeling that when the countdown ended, something terrible would happen.

For a moment, he stood blankly where he was.

Luo Wenzhou hadn't even stopped to close the car door; he was already gone. But what could they find in less than five minutes?

For a time, the woman's face, teary-eyed and smiling, flashed before his eyes, blurring and gradually expanding, dangerously linking up with distant times, spreading as far as that summer day in the extravagant but solitary big house—

Just then, the sharp sound of a car braking scraped over his mind; the criminal policemen who had turned up nothing searching around Chengguang Mansion had arrived. Tao Ran got out, leading a big group of people. Tao Ran was quickly saying something into his walkie-talkie as he directed everyone to split up.

The countdown was at exactly four minutes, then three minutes and fifty-nine seconds—

Fei Du suddenly picked up his phone and quickly dialed a number. "It's me. Is the Canopy of Heaven corridor owned by the Economic and Trade Center? Get me their President Li, quick!"

The street full of bars was all lit up, bright as day. A number of merry-making guests heard the commotion of the light show and one by one went over to the central square carrying colorful cocktails, cheerfully shouting out along with the countdown. Under the glorious lights, the harried policemen travelled back and forth among the buildings—there was no time to wait for the elevators. They had to run up the emergency stairs, arrive breathless at the rooftop, hold up a flashlight to search. Finding nothing, they turned back and went to search the next one...

The woman stood on high. Had the person who had brought her there already left, or was he somewhere watching her?

She thought that this person had been a little familiar, but she hadn't strained herself to find out who he could be. On the contrary, the trace of familiar feeling had placated her.

Though it was already summer, in the dead of night the wind on the rooftop was still cold. She looked down. From her high vantage point, the unceasingly flashing LED screens and laser lights of the commercial center were dizzying.

"How much electricity does this take?" she thought irrelevantly.

At home, in order to save electricity, she would sit out in the yard in the evening, wash up by feel and by the light of the moon. She wouldn't turn on the lights if she didn't have to. She had never seen such an extravagant night scene with her own eyes.

The woman once again looked at the countdown on the big screen: one minute and five seconds, one minute and four seconds...

She bent over with some effort, picking up a big sign from the ground. Her "grievance" was written on the outside of the sign; on the inside were two sturdy straps, so she could wear the sign like a pair of wings on her back.

She didn't know whether the sign would break if she jumped from such a high place, so there was also a testament hidden in her pocket—that person had printed it for her. She could only approximately read what was written on it, having forgotten most of the reading and writing she'd learned in elementary school.

The minute position on the countdown had already become a zero, and the second count was quickly decreasing.

The woman clenched her teeth. Wearing her "wings" telling of deep injustice, she stepped over the railing—

CHAPTER 26 [Julien- Twenty Five]

With forty-five seconds remaining on the countdown, the whole Canopy of Heaven suddenly froze. Then, under everyone's blank gazes, a photograph of a young man spread over it.

He was eighteen or nineteen, very ordinary-looking, a little dark, his posture facing the camera very cautious, but he was still smiling widely, showing all his white teeth.

The gaze of the woman on the rooftop encountered this beaming photograph without warning. She went still; she was straddling the railing with one foot in and one foot out, the "wings" on her back fluttering in the night wind.

What the woman saw, all the people gathered in the central square to wait for the closing ceremony rehearsal also saw. Luo Wenzhou had just finished searching a building and was exiting. He lifted his head and saw the transformation outside. He staggered and nearly rolled down the steps at the entrance.

A criminal policeman next to him meanwhile sucked in a breath. "Captain Luo, the broadcasting rights must have been bought up. Can they suddenly change it like this? It's...it's another smashed-up car!"

"Shut up!" Luo Wenzhou's steps didn't stop. He lifted his walkie-talkie. "Group 1, respond. Have you found the car? Take note of all intersections. If the car's driver makes an appearance, seize him at once. Give Fei Du the car's make, model, and license plate number, have him throw it up on the screen, encourage people to call in."

At the same time, in the Trade Center Building's control room, a crowd of workers were so busy their feet didn't touch the ground.

"Is the recorder connected?"

"Where's the video processor?"

"Lights, lights, lights... Hey, look out for that wire!"

In the midst of this noise, Fei Du was resisting the impulse to pace, forcing himself to stand unmoving in a corner.

His leather shoe, which had at some point picked up a smudge, was tapping lightly on the floor. It seemed that the whole world contained an unhurried melody in 4/4 tempo that he could use any time to separate himself from all the surrounding sounds.

Suddenly, the lights came on in front of him. Fei Du looked up.

"President Fei, the equipment's ready!"

The woman on the rooftop stared greedily at the boy in the photograph for a long time.

To tell the truth, it was a strange thing. His face was clearly ordinary; no one would look twice at him in the street; but in her eyes, he was unspeakably adorable.

His clumsy square chin was adorable, his very wide-set eyes were adorable, his sparse brows were adorable, even his two front teeth with a slight gap between them were adorable. She could have looked at him for ten thousand years without seeing enough.

Unfortunately, she couldn't.

As soon as this thought arose, her memories surged up like a tide, slow but inexorable, the gleam in her eyes like an obstinate reef being gradually submerged.

She raised her head, wiped her eyes, and remembered—Zhongyi was gone.

She clenched her teeth, preparing to step over with her other leg, hoping that they could reunite over there.

Just then, the picture on the Canopy of Heaven dissolved and a video was inserted.

The hastily put up background was a stark white wall; a few lights shone on it from different angles, so bright they hurt the eyes. A young man wearing a black shirt appeared in the center of the screen. Likely because the equipment had been set up so quickly, it seemed that the aspect ratio wasn't quite right; he was a little unnaturally stretched out.

This was the young man she'd wanted to say goodbye to, but hadn't been able to wait for.

The person on the Canopy of Heaven gently touched the microphone and spoke. "Hello, auntie. I haven't heard any news of you. For me, that's the best news. I want to try using this method to say a few words to you. If you can hear me, please grant me two minutes of your time and listen to what I have to say."

Wang Xiujuan looked in some terror at the screen on which a person had just appeared. She was so bewildered her thoughts vanished. She could only subconsciously nod once. Then she remembered that they couldn't see each other.

Luo Wenzhou was just crossing the central square, with his left ear listening to all the groups' progress reports through his earbud, with his right ear paying attention to his surroundings. His attention divided, he commanded, "Find some people to maintain order in the central square. If there aren't enough people, ask the security guards to help. Don't let the people around here call out anything that could disturb her state of mind."

On the big screen, Fei Du spoke. "Auntie, if my own mother were still alive, she would be about the same age as you."

Luo Wenzhou heard this and subconsciously looked up at him, but even as he looked, his steps didn't stop. He quickly crossed the square's open ground, hurrying towards the next building. "Group 3, the rooftops of the buildings overlooking the street all have security cameras. You can check them directly, no need to waste time. Tao Ran, take care to disperse the traffic over there. Group 4, come with me to the eastern Gemini Building, there are some floors under construction, it's a serious possibility."

Fei Du's somewhat downcast voice relentlessly pursued his hurried steps. "...I came home more frequently than Zhongyi. After all, he had to work hard to save money to pay for your treatment, while I was only an idle student. Every weekend, she would change the flowers for fresh ones, pour out her efforts preparing my favorite things to eat, clean my room, air out my quilt. She didn't like having a housekeeper around, so she had to do all these things herself.—Did you also air out Zhongyi's quilt for him?"

Past endurance, Wang Xiujuan let out a long sob, which was shortly picked up and drawn away by the wind.

The sobbing wind swirled down from the building's rooftop, brushing past Luo Wenzhou's sweat-soaked temples like a sigh.

"But one day, I came home full of expectation and opened the door. I found there was only a pile of dried twigs in the vase at the door. All the curtains were closed, and the rooms were full of a smell like death. When I reached her room, trembling with fear, what I found wasn't an aired-out quilt, but her corpse." Fei Du paused slightly. "Not long ago, you said to me, my mother must have looked forward to me coming home every day. But back then, the policeman who worked the case told me that the night before I came back, she killed herself.—I came home at the same time every weekend. She knew that.

"Mom, I've always wanted to ask you a question. What kind of mother would choose that time, leaving her corpse for her child to find on purpose? I thought every day about how to be good to you, how to make you happy—how to save money so I could pay for your treatment, how to repay the person who'd lent me the money for your surgery... I still haven't returned the money, and now I'm alone in a freezer and can't return home. Are you planning to leave me here? If you're all so heartless, then why did you act like you cared about us so much before?"

Straddling the guard rail, Wang Xiujuan slowly crouched down.

Fei Du stopped for a moment, touched the microphone again, silently counting to five.

At the same time, in a corner of the image, the mysterious rental car's make, model, and license plate number appeared. Wang Xiujuan's education level was limited, and she couldn't make anything of the words and numbers, but the passersby all around read them and one after another got out their phones and spread the information to their friends and family.

"Captain Luo, the Gemini Building's construction team says they're using the weekend to overhaul the building's electric system. They turned off the power over an hour ago."

Luo Wenzhou's back was soaked with sweat, making him experience something of what old Lian Po had gone through wearing thorns to humbly apologize. He would have liked nothing better than to part ways with his back, leave his spine responsible for his internal organs, and decamp, exiting the marriage without property.

He looked up at the tall tower and clenched his teeth. "Let's go up."

Fei Du was silent for a while, then, slowing his speech, broke off the purposeful confusion between himself and He Zhongyi. "Auntie, the murderer hasn't been caught yet, and you don't understand any of the circumstances. Doing this in such a muddle, how do you plan to tell Zhongyi? I implore you, wherever you are now, could you come as quickly as possible to the square? We're all looking for you. We'll go catch the murderer together, and when he's caught, you'll still have to take Zhongyi home, and I still want to speak with you for a while.

"Could you...give me another chance to pretend I'm seeing my mom?"

Wang Xiujuan at last began to wail.

She cried her soul out, the courage that had made her want to throw herself in this city's face flowing east into the sea with her tears. She once more weakened into a lost and nervous woman who had just come to Yan City. When she looked down from on high, she suddenly even felt that her legs were a little weak.

Wang Xiujuan turned her gaze away but couldn't keep her footing. She tried grabbing the guard rail, wanting to draw her foot back in, but at that moment there was a great change—

The seemingly firm guard rail was actually only loosely held in place. Wang Xiujuan was entirely unprepared. When she grabbed it, the broken railing swung out. She lost her balance and went falling back.

Wang Xiujuan's eyes opened wide. Her mind roared.

At the last moment, a human figure flashed over and grabbed her foot, just held up by the half-loose railing. The woman struggled instinctively, and her thin ankle nearly slipped from his hand.

Her weight pulled at Luo Wenzhou's arms, and his just sealed back instantly tore open, as if he was being split in two. Clinging to one thought, he held onto her and roared, "Don't move!"

Fortunately he hadn't come up alone. The people following quickly dashed over, and three minutes later, all working together, they had pulled up Wang Xiujuan, who had lost consciousness.

Luo Wenzhou ordinarily felt that he could ascend to heaven and go three hundred rounds of battle with Sun Wukong, but now he had over-exerted himself so much he could barely stand up. He staggered backwards a few steps, then simply dropped inelegantly to the ground, gasping for breath, waiting until he heard someone say, "Captain Luo, she's alive!"

His muscles, tensed into a knot until then, relaxed.

As soon as he relaxed, Luo Wenzhou found that the blood and sweat on his back had mixed together. The pain made him suck in a shaking breath. "Hss... Fuck, I'm just about done for..."

Just then, Lang Qiao's voice came over the walkie-talkie in his pocket. "Chief, a couple just reported seeing the suspect's car in the landscape park. The lights were on inside and they were afraid the murderer was still in there, so they didn't dare to go over!"

"A park? Where?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"About a kilometer from the central square, I think. It's pretty deserted at night. No one but couples sneaking around goes there."

"That's not right. It can't be that far away," Luo Wenzhou said amidst the insistent pain. He closed his eyes. "Coordinate with the repair team, make them turn on the building's emergency power supply. Turn on all the security cameras, position people to watch the cameras' blind spots.—This murderer sent a lawyer to keep track of the investigation, and he kidnapped someone right from the City Bureau. I don't believe he'd be willing to quietly hide away from everyone when he hadn't seen the outcome he wanted yet." 

CHAPTER 27 [Julien- Twenty Six]

These tall buildings presented icy exteriors. Their straight-up-and-down trunks were oppressive. Their lobbies were usually floored in bright, reflective stone, and the front desk attendants and security guards would fix their gazes on anyone who set foot inside.

Each building had its own distribution of elevators—all the elevators had their own systems. Some couldn't go up, some couldn't go down, some distinguished between odd and even floors, some could only be used after swiping a card; they formed a body unto themselves, often leaving strangers at sea, leading them to feel estranged from these repellant little "states."

But the Gemini Building was different. Even though it had already been completely redecorated, it was still as familiar to him as the palm of his hand—he had done an internship here for half a year, but afterwards he hadn't stayed, because they'd just had to have an exchange student from a "well-known school" who only understood European and American legal systems.

There was no comparing the present to the past. These people waving around attractive legal assignments could only review a basic contract. In order to handle any matter that required a very high level of specialization, they had to ask him to come back and act as adviser. In this building, the intern Xiao Zhao had become "Mr. Zhao" with the wave of a hand.

But each corridor, each stairwell hidden in the shadows, was carefully recorded in his mind. Even if the power hadn't been turned off, he still had the assurance of being able to avoid the building's security cameras.

But sadly, while all the conditions were perfect, someone had upset his plans.

When he'd been mixed in with the crowd, ready to watch a splendid "performance" on the Canopy of Heaven only to be interrupted midway by Fei Du, he'd flown into a rage. He'd decided almost at once that this was a base publicity stunt—perhaps he was supporting his drinking buddy, and perhaps there was some commercial purpose.

These people controlled assets and social resources that it was hard for him to imagine, even though each one was a blockhead, even though listening to an ordinary due diligence report could have them ready to pass out, yawning their heads off—if through the efforts of countless experts they could occasionally pretend to issue one or two obvious conclusions, then they would immediately be lauded as "young geniuses."

A policeman leading several security guards temporarily hired to help with the evening performance hurried over to maintain order. "Everyone, please don't hang around near the high rises. We're still investigating the rooftops, there's a chance of danger here. Will you cooperate? Thank you, sorry, it's for your safety..."

Hearing this, the crowd slowly moved away. No one noticed a fair and refined man turning and disappearing into the darkness.

The police dispersing the crowd here clearly indicated that they would soon come to search, and that stupid woman still hadn't jumped.

He didn't know whether she'd gotten scared at the last moment, or whether she'd been hoodwinked by that pretty boy's inferior performance. In accordance with reason, he had a contingency plan—only one side of the rooftop of Tower A faced the central square. He had fixed up the guard rail so that even if she hesitated at the last moment, the loosened guard rail would help her make her decision.

His arrangements ought to have been foolproof. What had gone wrong?

He had to go back to look.

He considered briefly and pulled out a crafty idea. He didn't go into Tower A, but went around to one side of Tower B, going in through the side door of a coffee shop on the ground floor of the office building. He familiarly went up the emergency passage specially provided for package and fast-food delivery people, running up to the eighth floor—there was an open-air corridor linking the two towers, connected to the eighth floor emergency stair.

There was a camera at the entrance to the open-air corridor, but that was all right. There was a wall of greenery on one side of the corridor, with enough space in the gap behind it for a person to pass through. It was a camera blind spot. Even though he knew that the Gemini Building's power was off and the security cameras were all only for show, he still decided to take his prudence to the limit.

The power being off truly was the best gift fate could have given him.

Feeling pleased with himself, he walked briskly through the greenery wall, failing to note that the wind of his passing had touched a plant climbing the wall and set it shaking.

The greenery wall blocked the camera, and he didn't notice that as the leaves trembled faintly, the security camera, which had been still as death, suddenly turned a very slight angle—

Luo Wenzhou came down following the EMTs and saw Wang Xiujuan to the ambulance. He turned his head and saw Tao Ran and a few criminal policemen escorting a delicate-featured man to a police car. This man, whom he'd seen once before, felt his gaze; his enraged, hateful look at once shot towards Luo Wenzhou.

Tao Ran gestured at him, raising the evidence bag in his hand. Inside it was a pair of gloves.

Luo Wenzhou nodded, put a cigarette in his mouth, and looked the prisoner up and down.

The man roared at him in outrage. "I just came back to fetch a document, why did you guys grab me? Do you have evidence? The police can't solve the case so they just grab some innocent person off the street and stick him with the blame? Let go, you barbarians, if you wrinkle my clothes you won't be able to be pay for it!"

"Wow, precious," said Luo Wenzhou, cigarette in his mouth, "I'm so scared. Looks like this poor wretch will have to borrow some money from Daddy Fei."

Watching the man being forced into the police car, Luo Wenzhou raised his hand and blew him a kiss. "Bye-bye."

He had just spoken when a hand reached over and rudely pulled the cigarette out of his mouth.

Lang Qiao's makeup had worn off long ago, revealing the circles around her eyes picked up from running around half the night, so noticeable that there was nothing left of her face but her eyes. She casually threw the cigarette into a garbage can a few steps away, then pointed at the ambulance behind her. "You get in there, too!"

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

"Look at you!" Lang Qiao criticized irritably. "Hurry up and get in. Tomorrow, behave yourself and stay in the hospital. Don't come back."

With a sigh, Luo Wenzhou said, "Daughter, you aren't yet grown and already planning to seize your imperial father's authority?"

Lang Qiao steamed at the ears, jabbing at him with a sharp finger. "You..."

"Hey, don't fuss," Luo Wenzhou interrupted her. "Do you know where President Fei went?"

Lang Qiao froze. She subconsciously looked up at the Canopy of Heaven. It was already broadcasting the closing ceremony rehearsal. It had reached the end now, the fireworks so splendid they dazzled the eye. Though compared to the cops-and-robbers film from earlier, fireworks weren't all that interesting. The surrounding crowds became bored and went to scroll through their social media.

"I don't know, I haven't seen him. Why do you want..." Lang Qiao twisted her neck in a circle. When she had turned her head back, Luo Wenzhou was gone.

Luo Wenzhou picked up a jacket someone had left in a police car and threw it on, covering up the bloodstains. He called Fei Du's phone; it rang, but no one picked up. Luo Wenzhou then strode over to the Trade Center and went in. First he went to the control room, where he found the workers eating a midnight snack. He questioned them and learned that Fei Du had already left.

He clarified the approximate direction he'd gone in, then went after him, calling as he walked. In the end, he finally faintly heard the "You Raise Me Up" ringtone behind the building.

Luo Wenzhou followed the sound and found a small garden, surrounded by shrubs, with some stone chairs and tables inside. By looking up you could see a corner of the Canopy of Heaven. There were no streetlights.

Fei Du was sitting on one of the blocks of stone, not worried about getting dirty, leaning against a stone table. His phone was set down, playing like a public loudspeaker.

Luo Wenzhou hung up the phone and went over. "You want me to play a little song for you, is that it?"

Fei Du didn't feel like paying attention to him. He closed his eyes, looking like he was already asleep.

Luo Wenzhou stiffened his upper body and sat down several steps away from him. "Why don't you go see her?"

Fei Du spoke indolently. "Isn't she safe?"

"The murderer loosened the guard rail on the rooftop," said Luo Wenzhou. "It was a close call."

Fei Du's hand, tapping out a beat, paused at once. Opening his eyes to look at Luo Wenzhou, he just happened to meet his gaze.

Luo Wenzhou's face was haggard. When he sat, his back was unnaturally stiff; he looked as if he was half-paralyzed.

But there were two lights reflected in his eyes, flickering slightly, not scorching.

For a moment, Fei Du felt this fairly familiar man become a little strange.

Luo Wenzhou's features were clear and handsome, his figure as good as before. His age wasn't very evident. If you said he was thirty, people would believe it, and if you said he was twenty, they would probably believe that, too—although Fei Du knew that in reality he hadn't looked like this when he'd been just past twenty.

Back then Luo Wenzhou had been a true young master, deeply accomplished in cockiness, always showing off his cleverness and very unwilling to spare anyone's feelings. His exterior had resembled his interior, always having a flamboyant and domineering flavor of immaturity.

But now, his outward appearance was like a stone carving that had been worn by the passing ages. The originally blurred outlines had come clear, while the spirit floating on top had settled; seen from a greater depth, it was unexpectedly almost gentle.

Luo Wenzhou shifted his posture slightly. "What you said on the Canopy of Heaven just now, was that true?"

Fei Du carelessly raised his eyebrows. "Of course not. I was just blending my own experiences with hers, trying to establish an emotional connection."

Luo Wenzhou hesitated for a moment—he had little experience speaking properly to Fei Du. They had always entered the personal attacks stage at the first misstep. He considered for a long time without settling on the appropriate wording and could only continue as before, saying whatever came to mind.

"I investigated your dad back then," said Luo Wenzhou.

This wasn't at all novel. A woman dies in her home without a sound and her only child maintains that she didn't commit suicide—for insurance, aside from the forensic evidence, the people close to her would also have to be looked into slightly. Therefore, Fei Du looked at him a little impatiently, wanting to make him stop saying useless things.

"In the process, I found that there was another group of people following him. I grabbed them and asked what they were doing, and found that they were a bunch of unemployed young men calling themselves 'private detectives.' You were the one paying them, right?"

Fei Du's patience came to an end. He stood up to go.

"There was another time when you were doing your homework at Tao Ran's house and left behind a few pieces of unused graph paper. There were indentions on it, and I went over them with pencil and found that it was your father's itinerary. It was already more than two years after your mom's death. I thought then, these two years and more, had you always been keeping track of your dad's whereabouts?" Luo Wenzhou paid no attention to Fei Du's bearing, quietly saying, "I thought that was horrifying, and then when your father had his accident..."

Having heard this much, Fei Du's steps paused. He was just passing Luo Wenzhou. Suddenly, he laughed silently.

He looked down at Luo Wenzhou, his gaze a little dangerous, and asked, "You suspected it was my doing?"

Luo Wenzhou looked directly into his eyes, which could throw out peach blossoms at any time, and couldn't help being moved—this brat really was well worth looking at.

Fei Du bent slightly, put a finger next to his lips, and in a voice almost as quiet as a whisper said to him, "It may very well have been me, Captain Luo. Think about it, whether he died or became brain dead, I was the only heir to his enormous property, as long as..."

He hadn't reached the end of his words when Luo Wenzhou suddenly forcibly interrupted his pretentious performance. He grabbed his collar, pulled his neck down, and smacked him on the forehead with the palm of his hand.

His palm was very hot. Fei Du felt like he'd been hit by an iron. Stupefied, he backed up half a step.

"I'm talking nicely to you, why are you being so obnoxious?" said Luo Wenzhou.

Fei Du came around and angrily pulled at his collar.—Who was the obnoxious one!

Luo Wenzhou's next words were: "But I suddenly thought, a person willing to open up his own chest in public to save a woman who was a complete stranger to him must not be a dangerous person. I was planning to apologize to you for all these years of prejudice and suspicion."

Fei Du froze. But before the sneer he was brewing had matured, he felt an entirely unexpected weight on his collar as Luo Wenzhou heavily fell forward right onto him.

Fei Du instantly felt that he'd been wrapped up in a scalding electric blanket. After a blank pause, he tentatively touched Luo Wenzhou's forehead with the back of his hand. It was burning, feverish enough to send up steam.

Fei Du pinched the edge of his jacket and lifted it to take a look; after that look he immediately twisted his head away—he wanted to throw up again.

He stood still in this strange position for a while, calmed his roiling stomach with difficulty, then stared expressionlessly at Luo Wenzhou, as if he were considering whether this piece of pork belly would be better stewed or sautéd.

Then he must have thought that this person was coarse and tough, the texture of the meat too old. Fei Du gave a "tsk" of disdain, bent, and tried out a few positions. He didn't want to carry him on his back or in his arms. He tried pulling him up over his shoulder by his belt but found that this bit of goods was rather heavy.

Fei Du tossed the unconscious Luo Wenzhou aside on a stone chair, picked up his phone, which would soon be out of battery, and called Tao Ran.

"Hello, is this 110?" In a tone that wasn't nice at all, he said, "I've picked up an old man, and I think he's about to bite it. How do I hand him in to the state?" 

CHAPTER 28 [Julien- Twenty Seven]

Luo Wenzhou lay facedown on his hospital bed, bored to death. Owing to his record of jailbreaking, he was being watched especially closely. He faintly heard Tao Ran talking to the doctor; after a while, the doctor left, the door of the hospital room creaked open, and he heard the steps of soft-soled leather shoes.

Without turning his head, Luo Wenzhou began to recite his lines. "I can't go on. You have to...hurry up and marry a good man, and when you're married to another, don't mistreat Yiguo. Yiguo's fate has been cruel, a motherless child..."

Tao Ran coughed several times as if he'd eaten chicken feathers.

Luo Wenzhou heard that there was something wrong and quickly twisted his head around to look. He saw their Director Lu standing next to him with his hands behind his back.

Director Lu answered affably, "I'd like that, but I'm so old, no one would have me!"

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

Propping himself up on the hospital bed, he quickly sat up. "Director Lu."

Lu Youliang put his briefcase aside, bluntly sat down, and put a hand up to his close-cropped hair. Pointing to the top of his head, he said, "Do you see that, little monkeys? In one night, half of my hair has gone white."

Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran, one sitting and one standing, didn't dare to speak.

"This morning, first the higher-ups called me in for questioning, and then I hurried over to see Wang Hongliang." Lu Youliang sighed. "That piece of work. He clung to my sleeve and wept, saying his supervision had been lax, that a leader's responsibilities were serious, and also that he requested the association not deal leniently with him. He's simply..."

As a quality leader facing his juniors, Lu Youliang in the end managed to swallow down the profanity that came after this.

He shook his head gloomily. "What have Huang Jinglian and his crew given up?"

"Two groups have been taking turns questioning them," said Tao Ran. "We'll see how long they can stick it out. Other than that, I've requested a search of Wang Hongliang's personal assets, although at the moment it seems that his assets have already been moved. On the face of it, he's clean."

"No matter how much investigation it takes, we have to grab him by the tail. We must have hard evidence for this, everything needs to be solid. Otherwise, we won't be able to answer for ourselves to anyone."

Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou suddenly had a thought. "Uncle Lu, what about Director Zhang?"

With such a big mess coming out of the sub-bureau, the real higher authority whose supervision had been inadequate was Director Zhang, and in addition to that, Zhang Donglai had been implicated in a homicide case.

This didn't need to be spoken to be understood. Lu Youliang sighed and put his hand on Luo Wenzhou's shoulder.

Then he turned and looked at Tao Ran. "What about He Zhongyi's case? What's the connection between the two cases?"

Tao Ran wasn't like Luo Wenzhou, who could offer anyone a cheeky grin. In front of Director Lu, he was somewhat nervous and subconsciously stood up straight, back to the wall. "In the small hours of the morning, we arrested the suspect Zhao Haochang. We found a pair of gloves in his pocket, which had paint and iron filings on them. The suspect must have been wearing these gloves when he damaged the security railing on the roof of the Gemini Building. But he's very sly. He only acknowledges loosening the railing as a 'practical joke' and utterly denies everything else. Also, he claims that he has an alibi for the night of May 20th."

"Don't you have conclusive evidence that on the night of the twentieth the victim disappeared on Wenchang Street?" asked Lu Youliang.

"The security cameras only caught the victim getting off the bus at Wenchang Intersection. Afterwards we lost track of him," said Tao Ran. "And Zhao Haochang's colleagues say that he was working overtime at the office the whole time. We can't say he was the killer just because the victim passed by his office. We still haven't revealed to Zhao Haochang that we have that security camera footage.—He's a lawyer. Though he doesn't specialize in criminal law, he's very quick. It's likely he would hear that that's the only card in our final hand, and it would put us on the defensive."

Luo Wenzhou laughed bitterly, feeling that there really was a meeting of the minds between Fei Du and Zhao Haochang, those two beasts in human clothing. Their lines of thought about the alibi were exactly the same. "Has Wang Xiujuan been able to identify him?"

"The victim Wang Xiujuan says that the person who picked her up last night was wearing dark glasses and a face mask. He was also wearing a wig, and he'd changed his clothes. It was hard to determine his appearance." Tao Ran paused. "We showed her a photograph of Zhao Haochang, and she doesn't seem to have recognized him. It's about the same with the rental car company. The wig and the jacket that the suspect used were both found in the abandoned rental car. We couldn't pick up any fingerprints. Should our next step be to consider a lie detector?"

"You can get it ready," said Luo Wenzhou, thinking, "but there's no rush. There's a point we haven't cleared up. What is the connection between He Zhongyi's case and the sub-bureau's?"

Before Tao Ran could speak, his phone suddenly vibrated twice.

Lu Youliang and Luo Wenzhou looked at him. Tao Ran raised his head. "A piece of bad news, and a lead that may or may not be useful.—The bad news is, the bloodstains on Zhang Donglai's tie have undergone DNA analysis. The blood does belong to the victim He Zhongyi."

Lu Youliang stood up, his expression rather grave.

"And the lead?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"The lead is that Wang Xiujuan has just remembered the person in the photograph. She says that he looks very much like a boy from her village called 'Zhao Fengnian,' only he's changed so much that she didn't recognize him at first."

Zhao Fengnian—'Fengnian'-ge.

Luo Wenzhou wanted to stand up at once. He made it halfway and nearly keeled over. "Hss... Someone...someone told me that it's very likely the murderer had a record. Immediately look into the whole history from 'Zhao Fengnian' to 'Zhao Haochang,' focusing on any unsolved cases of suspicious death among people close to him!"

Lu Youliang repeated the words "someone told me," then frowned. "On that subject, I heard that that valiant car owner later paid full price for five minutes of broadcasting rights on the East Flower Market District's Canopy of Heaven during the closing ceremony rehearsal, and performed a suicide intervention for Wang Xiujuan? How much did the broadcasting rights cost?"

"He said it wasn't much," Tao Ran answered very sincerely. "Not as expensive as that car of his."

Director Lu felt a trend among the few remaining black hairs on his head to turn white.

"Your Criminal Investigation Team..." The old man considered the sum of money he had heard about, and his blood pressure started to rise. He deliberately asked, "Do you understand the situation? Is there a female comrade who's encountered some trouble in her 'personal emotional life?'"

Speechless, Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran looked at each other helplessly.

Lu Youliang seriously reviewed the young women on the Criminal Investigation Team and uncertainly asked, "It couldn't be Xiao Lang?"

Having said this, he himself thought that that fool Lang Qiao wouldn't have attracted a domineering director-general. He looked at Luo Wenzhou again. Lu Youliang remembered some "secrets" that to this day he'd been unable to entirely accept and suddenly glowered, pointing at Luo Wenzhou. "It's not your doing, is it?"

Luo Wenzhou immediately said, "Injustice! A singular injustice throughout the ages!"

Director Lu had yet to relax when Luo Wenzhou blinked, thought for a moment, and nodded once with a great show of earnestness. "Although it sounds like that's my bad luck.—Alas, he's too much of a bastard. If I spent a whole day with him, I'd die of anger eight times. So never mind."

Lu Youliang hadn't expected his shamelessness to be this far-ranging and was so angry his blood pressure shot directly up to 180. Speechless, he pointed at Luo Wenzhou. "Time is tight and the task is pressing. Anyone who pulls any shenanigans had better look out!"

But when Tao Ran had seen the furious leader out and returned to the hospital room, he found Luo Wenzhou sneakily smoking out an open window.

"Where'd you get that?"

"From Old Man Lu's pocket," said Luo Wenzhou. "Hey, are you my brother? I need to run off in a bit, will you cover for me?"

Tao Ran's temples throbbed. "What are you going to do now?"

"Chen Yuan—that black-cab-driving kid's sister. She died an unnatural death half a month ago. Before that, she'd phoned a girl she hadn't contacted in a long time. I've been thinking that there was something unusual about the call, and I want to go find her and clear it up."

"Does it have to be today?" Tao Ran said helplessly.

Luo Wenzhou tapped out his cigarette ash. "The sooner the better. There's too much pressure at the bureau."

Frowning, Tao Ran considered their captain's pitiful appearance. He wanted to say something, but he felt it would have been a waste. He had to come to compromise. "All right. What's the girl's name? What does she do?"

"Cui Ying. She's a second-year graduate student at Yan West Polisci."

Tao Ran froze at once. "Yan West Polisci? Then was the Chen Yuan who died also at Yan West Polisci?

"What's wrong?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"Zhao Haochang graduated from Yan West Polisci!" Tao Ran said quickly. "Last year I think he got an invitation from their academic advisor and came back to supervise some real world experience for the students!"

Luo Wenzhou stubbed his cigarette out on the windowsill. "Shit. Let's go!"

At this time, in another hospital room, Lang Qiao, not blinking an eye, was listening to He Zhongyi's mother Wang Xiujuan speak.

Fei Du was next to them, wearing single-use gloves and peeling an apple.—Reasonably speaking, he shouldn't have been there, but Wang Xiujuan had nearly committed suicide and then gotten a huge scare. Her mood had been unstable since she'd woken up. She'd become an "elderly child" who needed to have a "guardian" present before she could say a few complete sentences.

So Fei Du had become her temporary "guardian."

Lang Qiao quietly asked, "Did He Zhongyi mention to you that he'd met Zhao Fengnian in Yan City?"

Mother He shook her head in small arcs.

"In relation to this Zhao Fengnian, do you remember anything else? You weren't able to recognize him at first. Is that because he hadn't come back to your village for many years?"

Mother He looked at Fei Du.

Fei Du didn't cut in. He smiled at her encouragingly, and cut up the peeled apple into small slices. He arranged them on a paper plate, added two toothpicks, and waved the plate between the two women. "This is dry work. Have some vitamins."

"He had nothing to come back for," said Mother He slowly, her voice a little hoarse. "His family was gone.

"At home there was a crippled father and a mute mother. Aside from him, there were three other children—two girl children and a boy child. The family was very poor. They barely managed to raise up a university student, and everyone was saying that good luck was on the way, but one winter, in the middle of the night, a village idiot got shut out by his family. He had nowhere to go, so he drifted, lit a fire to keep warm, and accidentally set fire to the big tree at the Zhao family's gate. The wind was very strong, howling, but everybody was asleep, and no one noticed. The idiot didn't have any sense, didn't know to call for help... The burning tree snapped and fell on the roof. It came crashing down. The whole family, old and young...except for the eldest, Fengnian, who wasn't home then and escaped the disaster, they all died. It was too awful!"

CHAPTER 29 [Julien- Twenty Eight]

Aside from a "learning to farm" field trip organized by her school when she was little, Lang Qiao had never left the city. Having heard this much, for a time she couldn't comprehend it and couldn't resist following up, "No, what you're saying is... A tree at the Zhao family's gate caught fire and fell, and the whole family burned to death? Did the whole family live in a single room?"

"Their house was a bad one," Mother He explained softly. "We're behind the times over there, I remember...it was after we had Zhongyi that it became normal to re-roof houses with brick and tile. Their family's man couldn't work, and there were a lot of children, they could barely manage to live. Where would they get the money to put up a new roof? They always lived in the old house. If a bit of snow fell in winter you had to sweep it away at once, or else the roof would come down.

"They'd managed to get their eldest out to study, and the whole family had such hopes for him. The old couple praised heaven and earth, said their son was working in the city, he had money, the family could rely on him and put up a new roof, and the deaf-mute youngest and the second girl would have hope, too. The roof had just been stripped off the wing then, the two girls had nowhere to stay, so they slept on the floor of their parents' room. When the burning tree came down, the ceiling beam collapsed, and the old couple were crushed right away. The two girls were both still young. One got her leg trapped, and the other one couldn't hear. Maybe she was a little slow, too. She panicked and tried to pull her little sister out, so she couldn't get out herself. The little one wasn't even two years old. There's nothing to say, there."

Lang Qiao was stunned for a long time, then quickly opened her notebook. "The fire happened while the house was being repaired? Where was Zhao Haochang—Zhao Fengnian at the time? In Yan City?"

Mother He thought about it for an age. "No, I think he'd come back home especially because of the house... But he wasn't there that day. He'd gone to the county seat to see his teacher or something. Oh, it would have been better if he'd been there. That family of little ones and cripples, if there'd been a perfectly good sturdy young man there, how could they have come to an end like that?"

This unusual story made Lang Qiao break out in gooseflesh. "Then...how did they know it was the idiot who'd done it?"

"He was right there, with a box of matches in his hand. When the first people came to put out the fire, they saw him sitting nearby, totally unconcerned, burning leaves for fun. They asked whether he'd set the fire, he giggled and nodded."

"How was this handled afterwards?"

"How else could it be handled? Like that. An idiot who didn't understand anything, what could you do to him? His parents were gone, his brother and sister-in-law saw him as a burden, the sister-in-law made a scene all over the place, said her family had no money, they weren't responsible, told them to go tie him up and shoot him. The police station in town sent people. When they saw that it was an idiot, they couldn't do anything, either. They took some photographs and left."

Lang Qiao spoke. "How could they not be responsible? If an incompetent individual injures another person's life or property, wouldn't the guardians bear the liability?"

Mother He looked back at her in confusion and fear. She didn't understand this imperial edict Lang Qiao had pronounced.

Lang Qiao exchanged a helpless look with her, then suddenly noticed that she'd said something stupid and felt so awkward she forgot how to speak for a time.

Just then, Fei Du, who hadn't uttered a sound all this time, put in a timely word. "Do you remember what kind of person this Zhao Fengnian was? What his relationship with Zhongyi was like?"

"Of course I remember. The whole village knew that the Zhao family's eldest had great prospects. Zhongyi and the other little ones were always following him around. He was a big boy, not willing to play with them, he would usually say something to get them to leave him alone, but with those little idiots it was always 'Fengnian-ge this, Fengnian-ge that.'" Mother He had said this much when she thought of something, and her eyes reddened. Someone passed her a wet paper towel, and she took it and mopped her face for a long time. "The Zhao family's eldest was pretty studious, when he was at home he didn't go out, just sat alone indoors reading. When he'd go out in the fields to help his family, if he met anyone he knew from the village, he'd say hello and nothing else. He was a very quiet child."

Fei Du nodded thoughtfully. "And afterwards, this Zhao Fengnian never went back."

"I didn't know where he'd gone. I never expected he was in the city, and he'd changed his name and become so important..." Mother He's words suddenly paused, and her eyes slowly opened wide. She seemed to be awakening from a dream. "The person driving the car who took me away yesterday was the Zhao family's eldest? I...I didn't recognize him! Why...why didn't he tell me? Does he have something to do with my son's case?"

Fei Du sighed and leaned slightly forward. Using a soothing voice, he said, "They're still investigating. Why did you go with him? What did he say to you?"

"He said...that he was a person who specially handled lawsuits for people. That there was a person surnamed Liu who did the same job, and he was that rich person's...—that person who came to the Public Safety Bureau last night."

"Attorney Liu," said Fei Du.

"Right, attorney. He said this Attorney Liu had evidence of who the killer was, and he'd snuck over to the Public Safety Bureau to report it because his conscience was bothering him, but there was no use having evidence, because the murderer was an important person, the police didn't dare to touch him. My son would have died for nothing... I panicked, asked him what to do. He said, in this society, if you want to right a wrong, you have to make a splash—"

When Tao Ran took Lang Qiao's phone call, he was serving as driver, taking Captain Luo, lightly wounded and refusing to leave the front, towards Yan West Polisci.

"I sent someone to investigate. When Zhao Haochang had just graduated, he didn't have money to rent an apartment and lived in the West Flower Market District for the better part of a year. That should explain why he's so familiar with the West District's terrain. Also, I confirmed with Attorney Liu that Zhao really was very concerned with Zhang Donglai's case. Before Zhang Donglai was released, he paid even closer attention than Zhang Ting." Lang Qiao took a breath and continued, "And Attorney Liu also says, since the business of the tie concerned his career, he didn't breathe a word about it to anyone but the police, not even his wife. Zhao Haochang definitely couldn't have known."

The phone was on speaker in the car. Luo Wenzhou interrupted her. "But he can quibble and say all important people are like that, or perhaps he'll simply say that it was something he made up to fool Wang Xiujuan. 'Make a splash' doesn't necessarily mean he was telling her to go kill herself. He just meant for her to cry out her wrongs in public—it's too vague, is there anything stronger?"

"Not yet, although there's something very fishy about what happened to his family. If it had happened to an ordinary villager and then been left unresolved, I'd believe it, but Zhao Haochang was already working then. Would he have let it go at that? He seems to be pretty competent at manipulating public opinion."

"Write up a report quickly, go through the formalities, and obtain the official records of the Zhao family's case from their town's police station." Luo Wenzhou considered. "Can we trace the phone he gave He Zhongyi?"

Lang Qiao sighed. "Smuggled goods. We can't track it."

"What about the 100,000 yuan?" said Luo Wenzhou.

A voice unhurriedly put in a word from beside Lang Qiao. "In some rather intricate M&A projects, a 'reliable' legal advisor will often get some gray income. Sometimes it may simply be cold hard cash. You won't find it."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

It was clearly an objective statement. Then why did it seem like a provocation coming out of a certain person's mouth?

"What brilliant ideas does President Fei have?" said Luo Wenzhou.

The phone line was silent for a while, and Luo Wenzhou was thinking that he'd just put in a word and left—that was something Fei Du would do—but then, Fei Du suddenly said, "I called Zhang Donglai this morning and asked if he remembered where his tie had gone. It turns out that he didn't even know he'd lost the tie. He thought about it for ages before he remembered and said that the day of the party at Chengguang Mansion, he had in fact gone to work during the day. In the evening he changed at the office in order to attend the event and left his previous outfit there. He couldn't have put something as big as a tie in his pants pocket. If he lost it when he changed, then my earlier inference was perhaps in error. When Zhao Haochang took that tie, he must not have known that He Zhongyi was waiting outside the mansion for him, and he didn't know he'd use the tie to strangle someone. So his motive for doing this is worth deliberating."

"You're saying he simply stole it."

"Given his income, such a small, worthless thing isn't worth pilfering," said Fei Du. "There's no saying but that he was just hoarding a memento."

Luo Wenzhou shuddered. "...hoarding Zhang Donglai's stuff?"

"If I recall correctly, that was the first time Zhang Donglai took him to a social occasion like the one at Chengguang Mansion in a private capacity," said Fei Du. "While chatting with He Zhongyi's mom, I suddenly thought that his character seemed very closed-off. Perhaps he would have some special way of commemorating events. Why don't you go investigate?"

"Er-Lang, did you hear that? Request a warrant to search Zhao Haochang's home." Luo Wenzhou issued a prompt decision, heard Lang Qiao's affirmative, then quickly hung up the phone. He turned his head and expressed to Tao Ran, "An idiot burned his whole family to death, and Zhang Donglai, who's no better than an idiot, 'strangled' someone from his hometown. The young genius Attorney Zhao has truly lived surrounded by injuries from idiots of all kinds."

Tao Ran's lips moved. He didn't speak.

"And what brilliant ideas do you have, Deputy-Captain Tao?"

"Nothing." Tao Ran hesitated for a long time. "It's not about this... I just...suddenly had an outrageous idea."

"Report it to the throne. It won't kill Our Imperial Presence."

While they were stopped at a light, Tao Ran turned his head and looked at him. "What do you think, could there be someone who already knew who the murderer was before we made a breakthrough?"

"Nonsense." said Luo Wenzhou. "You killed someone, aren't you going to know about it? You need the police to affix their seal?"

"Aside from the murderer?" asked Tao Ran.

Luo Wenzhou froze. "Tao Ran, what are you trying to say?"

Just then, the light changed, and the driver behind them honked somewhat testily to hurry them. Tao Ran pursed his lips, turned back to the road, and drove on.

"It's nothing," he said. "Forget it. My imagination's running away with me. I think I could go write novels.—Yan West Polisci's graduate campus should be up ahead."

"Right." Luo Wenzhou picked up a folder. "First I'll try calling Cui Ying."

The girl's photograph, department, phone number, and other such materials were all there. Luo Wenzhou had just dialed when several young people came out of the graduate campus's back gate. Among them, one girl fished a phone out of her bag and seemed to be hesitating about an unfamiliar incoming number.

Tao Ran looked at the students from afar, then looked at the photograph in the folder. He suddenly poked Luo Wenzhou with his elbow. "Look, doesn't that young lady look like the one you're searching for?"

As he said it, the girl picked up the phone. At the same time, a hesitant "Hello?" came over Luo Wenzhou's speaker.

"It's her." Luo Wenzhou got out of the car on the spot and called out, "Hey, Cui Ying, here, look to your right—"

The students next to her, hearing a strange young man calling to her in the middle of the street, all began teasing her. Cui Ying looked around in bewilderment. Then, her gaze fell on the police license plate. The girl's face immediately changed, as if she'd seen a ghost. Then without any warning she turned and ran!

"What's going on?" Luo Wenzhou asked Tao Ran as he gave chase. "That young woman turned and ran when she saw you. You're done for, Tao Ran, doomed to be single all your life."

Tao Ran clenched his teeth. "You scared her!"

Luo Wenzhou had no plans whatsoever of finding a young lady to share his days and therefore was untroubled. The two of them cooperated in tacit understanding, one chasing and the other blocking. They had nearly caught Cui Ying when she suddenly leapt heedlessly straight into the road. A taxi was just driving by. The sharp sound of its horn pierced the air.

Tao Ran deftly grabbed her by the back of her collar and pulled fiercely, yanking Cui Ying back to the side of the road. The hastily braking taxi narrowly brushed past her shoulder, the sharp wind raising the girl's hair behind her.

Recovering from his fright, the taxi driver rolled down the window and let out a torrent of abuse. A breath had caught painfully in Tao Ran's chest. He could only wave his hand in apology.

Twenty minutes later, Tao Ran and Luo Wenzhou took Cui Ying to a brightly lit cold drinks bar.

"This'll do, right? You chose the place yourself, and the street outside these French windows is full of people. If you yell, you can call over half a city's worth of people. You can send a text message to your friends telling them where you are." Luo Wenzhou irritably tossed his work ID on the table. "My badge number. You can take a photograph and post it on Weibo—but don't post my photograph directly, pixelate it or Photoshop it."

Cui Ying: "..."

Tao Ran ordered some drinks. Worried that Cui Ying's wariness was too strong, he didn't touch them but asked the clerk to put them in front of Cui Ying. "Why did you run?"

Head down, Cui Ying didn't speak.

"You're afraid of police cars...or afraid of the police?" Tao Ran asked quietly. Seeing she still didn't answer, Tao Ran lowered his voice and said, "This may be good news. The Flower Market District Sub-Bureau's Director-General Wang Hongliang was arrested last night."

Cui Ying froze immediately. Then she at last cautiously looked up.

Luo Wenzhou knocked on the table. "Be sensible, all right? Please, young lady, push up your glasses and take a good look. Have you ever seen such a handsome bad guy? If I'd wanted to make a fortune, I'd have gone out and made it with my face long ago. Would there be any need to risk breaking the law?"

"Don't listen to his nonsense," said Tao Ran. "Young lady, I don't know how to make you trust us..."

Cui Ying suddenly said in a quiet voice, "Isn't there also one surnamed Huang?"

Luo Wenzhou exchanged a look with Tao Ran.

She did know something!

"Huang Jinglian," said Luo Wenzhou, becoming serious. He pulled up a mugshot on his phone. "Suspected of abusing his power, trafficking in drugs, murder, and other crimes. I arrested him last night. I've still got a glorious 'silk ribbon' on my back."

Cui Ying subconsciously opened her mouth to speak, then tightly closed it again. She looked at Luo Wenzhou and Tao Ran, full of suspicion, trying to use all of her limited experience to judge whether these two people had truly arrested Wang Hongliang or had only concocted these facts and taken some seemingly real pictures to trick her.

She couldn't even tell whether Luo Wenzhou's work ID was real or fake.

"Young lady," said Tao Ran, "do you know Chen Zhen? He was Chen Yuan's brother. Last night, Chen Zhen died, and we caught the killers. But because we lack evidence, we can't get to the person behind them. Are you going to sit by and watch the bad guys get away with it?"

Cui Ying bit her lip and hesitated for a long time. She said, "I...I don't know. I have to ask my teacher."

"Why do you have to ask someone else?"

"He...he has it."

Tao Ran froze, then followed up, "He has what? Did Chen Yuan give you something?"

Just then, Luo Wenzhou hit him with his elbow.

Luo Wenzhou held out his hand to Cui Ying. "Go ahead. You can call right in front of us."

Cui Ying picked up her phone, found the name "Teacher Zhao" in her contacts and dialed. She called twice, then said in surprise, "No one's picking up..."

Of course no one was picking up. He'd spent the night squatting in a little dark room.

Luo Wenzhou, with a great show of earnestness, got out a little notebook. "How about this, give us your teacher's contact information and we'll go have a chat with him."

Cui Ying hesitated.

"Chen Yuan called you two weeks before she passed away. I think she told you something. This must all have happened around that time. Investigating which teachers you had contact with and which one of them was surnamed Zhao would be easy. I'm only asking you to save a little effort. You've divulged this much already, anyway."

Cui Ying was flustered for a moment, then agreed.

"His name is Zhao Haochang. He's our shixiong. Our Practical Experience Class invited him to act as coach. He was there for three months," said the inexperienced girl. Then she told them a phone number. "That's his contact information."

Luo Wenzhou considered her for a moment, then suddenly said, "If I recall correctly, Chen Yuan didn't go on to a graduate program after graduation but went right to work. I guess your teacher didn't know her?"

Cui Ying didn't notice that he was fishing for facts and shook her head. "He didn't."

"I understand now," said Luo Wenzhou. "She entrusted something of vital importance to you that she was afraid of others getting their hands on. She didn't even give her brother a hint. You thought this thing was too scary, you were at your wits' end over having it, so you went to someone you trusted and left the thing with him. That's about right?"

Cui Ying's expression flickered. She didn't answer.

"You trust him so much," said Luo Wenzhou. "Your teacher must be pretty handsome?"

Cui Ying blushed.

On the one hand were the police, whom she didn't trust; on the other was the person she had a crush on. If they told her Zhao Haochang had been arrested, there was no need to say what Cui Ying's reaction would be.

Luo Wenzhou sighed inwardly. What was there to do? Seduce her?

Looking at the trembling Cui Ying, an idea suddenly flashed through his mind—

CHAPTER 30 [Julien- Twenty Nine]

When she was alive, Chen Yuan must have known that none of her personal property would escape notice. Even her close relative had eyes on him—during the critical days after He Zhongyi's body was found in the West District, Wang Hongliang had gotten nervous and sent someone to shadow the clueless Chen Zhen. So what about Chen Yuan, who had waded in deeper?

She was a girl without support. How had she been able to dodge Wang Hongliang's vast nets and secretly deposit something with Cui Ying?

He didn't know at the moment whether Wang Hongliang and the others had closely investigated Chen Yuan's contacts, but it seemed that for now at least they had no quarrel with Cui Ying. Why?

There were only two possibilities. Either Wang Hongliang and his crowd of bastards were all stupid, or they thought they had already gotten what they'd wanted.

Chen Yuan had used some means to deliver something to Cui Ying, and not long after, Chen Yuan had died, and at the same time Wang Hongliang and his crew had restrained themselves and not touched Cui Ying—what did that say?

Luo Wenzhou's expression cooled.

Two possibilities: first, the naive, easily-probed girl in front of him had sold out Chen Yuan.

Second, the panic-stricken Cui Ying had consigned the whole thing to someone she trusted—Zhao Haochang.

Zhao Haochang, never mind why, had sold Chen Yuan out to Wang Hongliang.

Just then, Tao Ran's phone got a call from the City Bureau. Tao Ran listened in silence for a while, then looked down and typed on his phone for Luo Wenzhou to see.

"Wu Xuechun just finished giving her statement. She identifies Huang Jinglian and the others as having protected the drug trafficking network, participated and deducted a percentage. But she never saw Wang Hongliang."

Luo Wenzhou frowned slightly.

Tao Ran typed quickly. "As for Chen Yuan, she says they call that 'morsels' over there. Wu Xuechun's own words are: There was someone else above Huang who never showed his face. He thought the place's girls were dirty and only liked to play around outside. When he ran into a girl who was hard to 'tame,' he'd use some drugs. When he got tired of her and she was worn out, they'd drop her off over there with them.

"Wu Xuechun said that one of Huang Jinglian's crowd liked filming things. Following her identification, we found some videos on that person's computer. Most of them are group sex and drug-taking. One of them shows Chen Yuan. From the images, the medical examiner judges that she was likely dead then."

Luo Wenzhou shot Tao Ran a questioning look—had Huang Jinglian given anything up?

Tao Ran shook his head.

Luo Wenzhou silently spun a pack of cigarettes around several times, then suddenly spoke. "Have them send over that video."

His careless manner had abruptly turned solemn, startling Cui Ying.

Cui Ying looked very much like a student. Her hair was long, she wore delicate glasses, and she had a slight tendency to chew on her straw. When she opened her eyes wide and looked ahead, there was an unsophisticated innocence in them.

The innocent one was sitting here sipping a drink and jumping at shadows; the not innocent one was dead.

"When it comes, let her see it." Having reversed his earlier buffoonery, Luo Wenzhou pushed the drinks on the table to one side. "Cui Ying, I don't want to beat around the bush with you anymore. I'll tell you the truth—your Teacher Zhao has been arrested."

Cui Ying's eyes widened. "Wh..."

Tao Ran's phone vibrated, a segment of a video file arriving. Luo Wenzhou took the phone, opened it, and put it right in front of Cui Ying. The lights in the image were dim. There was a crowd of people in all kinds of contortions, cries rising and falling. The cameraman's hands were unsteady, the image shaking dizzyingly.

A man wobbled out of a small door and waved a hand to the person behind the camera. "Come look, guys. I think this one's done for."

He'd started to laugh weirdly to himself before the words were out of his mouth; this sort of confused laughter was a typical symptom of a drug overdose. Then he bent over and dragged a naked woman out of the door behind him.

Cui Ying didn't know what kind of restricted film this was; she subconsciously wanted to turn away her gaze, but Luo Wenzhou stared fixedly at her. "Zhao Haochang is suspected of murder, disposing of a corpse, abduction, and other crimes."

Gooseflesh rose on Cui Ying's forearms.

Then, in the video on the phone, the camera suddenly pulled in close, the cameraman saying in a voice like a spoiled child's, "Let me film her, let me film her!"

The camera lens travelled up and down Chen Yuan's corpse, constantly focusing on her face and private parts. Cui Ying covered her mouth, looking like she was about to throw up.

At the same time, Luo Wenzhou smacked the table. "You see, this is how Chen Yuan died."

Cui Ying stood up at once.

Luo Wenzhou said, "She trusted you, put a very important secret in your care, and you turned around and gave it to a scumbag! You let her come to this end."

"No, it wasn't..." Cui Ying shook her head, her voice weak.

"If it wasn't him who sold out Chen Yuan, are you going to tell me it was you?" Luo Wenzhou asked callously. "Do you want to explain to me why she died a few days after calling you?"

Eternal Good Cop Tao quietly got into position. "Don't scare her.—Young lady, less than two weeks after the last time Chen Yuan contacted you, she met an unnatural death. My partner isn't lying to you about that.—Were the two of you on good terms?"

Cui Ying collapsed back into her seat. "You're talking nonsense, Teacher Zhao isn't that kind of person..."

Tao Ran softly asked, "Then what kind of person is he?"

"He's very mature, and very calm... He, he said to me, there's nothing new under the sun, he wasn't surprised at all. The reality is that the weak are prey to the strong. The people who become carnivores by a fluke of luck will mercilessly divide up their prey's flesh and blood...

"Only a tiger can hunt the wolves and jackals. A rabbit can only wait, wait for the right time to become a tiger itself." In a tearful voice, Cui Ying said, "He said the police are all trash, he wouldn't get down in the mud with them."

Only when the words were out of her mouth did she realize that the two people in front of her were also police. She quickly broke off and sobbed silently.

"Do you believe us?" Tao Ran said.

Cui Ying twisted the edge of her clothing.

"Your Teacher Zhao has already become a tiger," said Luo Wenzhou coldly. "Last night's failed suicide attempt in the East Flower Market District flooded social media, did you see it?"

Tao Ran added, "Zhao Haochang committed a murder, then dumped the body in the so-called 'Golden Triangle Lot.'—Judging by your reaction, you know the place?"

Cui Ying sucked in a breath, looking like she'd frozen stiff.

Tao Ran lowered his voice further. "What's wrong?"

"He...he was joking with me once, and he said that if he'd killed someone, he'd go around them and drop the body where they did their business, those pieces of trash definitely wouldn't dare to investigate..."

"Cui Ying," said Luo Wenzhou heavily, "what was it that you gave Zhao Haochang?"

"A video," said Cui Ying numbly, "just a video."

Saying it, she clenched her teeth and pulled a red cord up from around her neck. A protection amulet in the form of a chicken bone hung from the cord. She split the chicken bone in two; there was a pocket flash drive inside.

While Luo Wenzhou was sighing in gratitude that this silly child actually had something on her, Lang Qiao was leading some people into Zhao Haochang's apartment.

It was brightly lit, beautifully decorated in a rather Western style; there were huge floor-to-ceiling windows and a bar. It was located in a building in a prosperous area and had a view of awe-inspiring immensity.

At a glance, there wasn't anything unusual in his apartment. It was a typical middle class home in the city.

The searchers combed over it several times and finally determined that there were no secret doors or hidden vaults. It was as clean as a sample room in a hotel.

"There's nothing." Lang Qiao stood in the brilliantly sunlit living room, hands on her hips as she spoke to Luo Wenzhou over the phone. "Cabinets, closets... We looked under the bed, too. It's an ordinary building, the developer sold hundreds of apartments like this at the same time, there's no way they would have built him a secret room. It's about a hundred square meters, we've gone over it centimeter by centimeter. Unless this place has an Anywhere Door, there can't be anything hidden here. Chief, I've looked into it, there aren't any other properties under Zhao Haochang's name. If it's really like President Fei guessed, would he have hidden something so freakish in someone else's territory?

"Oh, right." Lang Qiao paused and added, "The material about the fire came through. There's nothing useful. For one thing, it was too long ago, and for another, all the villagers said the idiot had done it, so they didn't do a thorough investigation, just took some photographs of the scene and the arsonist."

The idiot in the photograph in fact had a look of being not all there. He was dressed in a tattered jacket with only one sleeve, almost too dirty to look at, that on very close examination could be distinguished as having a delicate floral pattern.

Luo Wenzhou paused briefly. "Wait a moment. Accept the incoming videoconference request."

Lang Qiao stared, hit "Accept," and saw a computer screen on the other end. Yan City's City Bureau's entire Criminal Investigation Team, along with Director Lu, were gathered around it.

A video was playing on the computer. It had been shot with a pinhole camera. At first it faced a blurry dark background; then there was a cry, and a young woman with disheveled hair fell into the center of the screen. Her expression was vague, her face ashen. She desperately reached out a hand, seeming to be thirsting for something but also refusing.

Just then, someone spoke outside the frame. "Just about there. Give it to her."

The camera's angle shifted slowly to the person who had spoken—it was Wang Hongliang, and Huang Jinglian was next to him, bending down to say something to him in a low voice!

The whole office filled with the sound of sucked in breaths.

Director Lu raised a hand and smashed it down on a table. "This time he won't get away!"

The camera focused on the woman again and backed up a few steps. Then a tray appeared in front of the camera, and a pair of hands picked up a syringe—

A moment later the restless woman let out a long breath and twitched a couple of times as if convulsing. Then her face relaxed, showing its graceful outlines.

She lay unmoving on the small couch, exchanging a long look with the person behind the camera.

Suddenly, the image shook, as if the person behind the camera had been pushed. Huang Jinglian appeared in the frame and said urgently, "Hurry up and leave. Don't get in the way."

He pushed the person behind the camera all the way to the door, at which point the camera once again had the opportunity to focus on the inside of the room.

A cigarette in his mouth, Wang Hongliang was just strolling up next to the half-unconscious woman. He stroked her shoulder, then looked up and smiled, seeming greatly moved. In the direction of the camera, he said, "When you've seen enough of this kind, it's like eating plain congee every day. A little dull."

The person behind the camera hurriedly backed up a few steps and shut the door of the room with a bang. The video ended.

"The woman who was injected with narcotics in that video is dead. Cause of death is again a drug overdose. The case was resolved exactly the same way as Chen Yuan's." Luo Wenzhou lit a cigarette. "Chen Yuan filmed that video, and not long after she was buried among the files in the same way, as if she'd recorded her own ending.

"When Chen Yuan was at school, she often worked to make some money to bring home. She had a lot of absences, and her grades weren't especially good. After graduation, she didn't pass the Judicial Exam, and because of her family background, she couldn't stay on to pursue her studies like her classmate. At first she tried a law firm, but because she lacked the relevant credentials, her salary wasn't ideal. To lighten the strain on her household as quickly as possible, she found a sales job with comparatively good pay and flexible hours. She wanted to get by for a while, pass the next year's Judicial Examination, and find regular work.

"The company she worked at sold counterfeit brand-name imported liquor. The Great Fortune Building was one of their major customers. That's where she met Huang Jinglian and the others. Huang Jinglian took a fancy to her because of her unusual qualities. Huang tricked her into drinking alcohol with some stuff in it, and that's how she became the 'morsel' Wu Xuechun spoke of."

"A university student who'd received a proper legal education." Director Lu sighed.

"Chen Yuan originally wanted to kill herself, but when she was on the point of it, she felt unreconciled.—This is the testament Chen Yuan left for her friend Cui Ying," said Luo Wenzhou slowly. "She used her company's online store to place an order for Cui Ying, put all the evidence she'd collected in a package of red wine and mailed it. This video was included, as well as some locations where they did business and their codenames, and a letter.

"'No one can save me now, but I must give myself an accounting.' That's the first line she wrote in the letter." Luo Wenzhou paused. "That's all Cui Ying knows.

"Besides that—" Luo Wenzhou turned the phone around. "Lang Qiao, are you still listening?"

"I'm here, chief. Whatever you need."

"Cui Ying revealed this matter to Zhao Haochang. Zhao Haochang heard half of it, then interrupted her, told her not to say it over the phone, and arranged to meet her at a little wineshop in a suburb. I looked into it while I was on my here; that wineshop's owner leased collective property for commercial use and illegally constructed some houses with limited property rights that he later sold a part of—"

"Give me the address." Lang Qiao understood his intention and at once stood up straight, waving a hand at the people next to her. "Come with me!"

Under the burning sun, the laid-out grape trellises were a little wilted. The scattered scholar tree flowers were nearly all withered. Glumly hanging their heads, a row of little "mini-villas" was hidden silently in an unnoticed corner. The landscaping wasn't finished yet, giving them the uncouth air of the urban-rural fringe.

A crowd of police pushed aside the trembling manager, opened the door to one of the houses, and split up to search.

"There's a basement here!"

Lang Qiao was the first to go down the cramped stairwell. The smell of moisture absorber hit her in the face. She pressed the switch of the wall lamp and looked up. She was stunned.

After taking Lang Qiao's phone call, Luo Wenzhou didn't say anything. Feelings weighing heavily on him, he went to the door, putting a cigarette in his mouth.

After a week of non-stop work, the details of these two connected cases had nearly all been clarified; they'd even found persuasive evidence. But for some reason his misgivings were becoming heavier and heavier.

Tao Ran came over. "What are you thinking of now?"

Luo Wenzhou didn't want to say much and casually fobbed him off, saying, "I'm thinking of Fei Du."

"Oh?" said Tao Ran in astonishment.

Before Luo Wenzhou could speak, someone next to them asked, "Thinking of me? Curious. What noble errand does Captain Luo have?" 

CHAPTER 31 [Julien- Thirty]

Compared to Officer Tao, who'd stayed out all night, and Captain Luo, who'd just smuggled himself out of the hospital, President Fei was dressed about well enough to attend a ceremony.

This person had changed his clothes once again. As before they were a careful midpoint between stern and casual, outwardly restrained and inwardly passionate. His hair was fluffy where it ought to be fluffy and sleek where it ought to be sleek; not a strand was out of place. He was also wearing a pair of metal-framed plain glass spectacles that gave him somewhat the appearance of the scum of the literati. He had even changed his cologne.

To find Wang Xiujuan, Fei Du had nearly stayed up all night; first thing this morning, he'd apparently gone to the hospital to accompany Wang Xiujuan as she gave her statement. Who knew where he'd found the time to smarten himself up?

Though Luo Wenzhou always believed himself to be the most handsome man under the sun, faced with such a clear contrast, he really wanted to beat up the peacock in front of him—especially since the above-mentioned peacock was looking at him with ill-intent through a pair of lenses.

Luo Wenzhou cleared his throat, forcing himself to go from ready-to-curse shamed anger to the pure-hearted bearing of a transcendent being.

With great earnestness, he said, "My people found a secret residence of Zhao Haochang's and discovered some things in the basement that line up closely with your inferences. I sincerely think you're awesome, President Fei. As expected from someone with twenty years of experience specializing in the abnormal."

Next to them, Tao Ran very uncomfortably said, "I don't know about you two, but I'm feeling a little embarrassed."

Thus undermined, Luo Wenzhou stuck his hands in his pockets and asked Fei Du, "What are you doing here again? Is your company about to close down?"

"I came on behalf of He Zhongyi's mom to ask about the progress of the investigation." Fei Du tapped the watch face on his wrist. "Also, in view of your senility, I'd like to remind Captain Luo that it's currently six o'clock in the evening on a Saturday. Neither the day nor the time is within working hours."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

"Ge," said Fei Du, turning to Tao Ran, "even if you're willing to work overtime, others should still repay your hard work by displaying their gratitude. Isn't that only polite? Bosses who forget the weekends, forget when work ends, are all trash. I think that sort of person's degree of odiousness is inferior only to bosses who forget to pay wages—luckily, he isn't the one who pays yours."

The city gates were aflame, and Tao Ran was a fish in the pond.—Tao the Fish expressionlessly beat out the flames of war on his body. "...Let's talk about what Lang Qiao found now."

Lang Qiao's scalp was tingling. She stood in the stairwell, in an unprecedented move rubbing her face with her unwashed hands.

The basement was laid out like an old-fashioned library, with several enormous cabinets reaching to the ceiling. The cabinets were full of small squares, and in each square stood a clear glass jar. The jars displayed all sorts of things, with label plaques hanging below them, each with a date and event written on them.

A chill, stale, unspeakable smell came towards her. The hairs on the back of Lang Qiao's neck stood up bit by bit.

For a moment, she thought these jars were like the ones used to keep laboratory specimens in.

But the most chilling thing wasn't the cabinets; it was a floor lamp standing among them.

The body of the lamp was made in the form of a tree of very strange appearance—the stand was a "tree" just about to snap. The hollow "trunk" had lights inside it; when they were on, light spilled out of the places where the "trunk" was broken. All the branches extending from it were bare; on all those bare branches were small, slender fluorescent lights, one after another. Seen from far off, they looked like they were wrapped up in blazing fire.

The searchers made an orderly record of the articles in the cabinets and their labels.

Zhao Haochang was very methodical. From left to right, it was in strict chronological order. On the earliest one, the label said "university." Judging from the time recorded, it must have been the day that Zhao Haochang—Zhao Fengnian, just starting university, had for the first time taken the train and left H Province.

Getting into university was worth commemorating, only ordinary people would normally preserve their letters of admission, whereas Zhao Haochang, forging a path of his own, had preserved a ham sausage.

When the police took it down, the packaging on this long-expired ham sausage wasn't even slightly torn.

This wasn't the only bizarre thing; there were also a number of other things that no one could make heads or tails of. From his internship period, he'd collected such items as cotton socks, a wrist brace, a storage disk, and other such odds and ends. To an outsider the collected items and the events recorded on the labels seemed to have almost no relationship between them, giving a very perplexing impression.

"Qiao'r." A comparatively nimble colleague had set up a stepladder and climbed up the earliest cabinet. As he took down and recorded the glass jars and their labels one by one, he asked, "Are you sure this junk is useful?—Small gongfu tea teacup, one, 'internship' written on it... And what the hell is this?"

His words paused. He picked up the jar and looked closely at it for a while. "The label says 'freed myself,' the memento is...a rag?"

Lang Qiao looked up at it. Her pupils shrank. "Give it to me!"

Wearing gloves, she carefully took the clear jar. Her heart gave a thump. In the chill and damp basement, she shuddered. It was a filthy, greasy sleeve. The old dirt reflected the light of the floor lamp; underneath was a faintly visible floral pattern.

In the photograph faxed over by the small town's civil policemen who had handled the arson case, the idiot had only had one sleeve!

"Xiao Lang," the person doing the right-most cabinet called, "come over here and look at this!"

On Saturday evening, Zhao Haochang had already passed a trying day and night at the City Bureau.

However pleasing to the eye a person was, after a sleepless night, the stubble and sebum on his face would be sufficiently disfiguring.

Zhao Haochang was in a somewhat sorry state, but he still expressionlessly maintained his posture. When he saw Luo Wenzhou come in, a file tucked under his arm, he even rather haughtily raised his chin.

"Hello, Attorney Zhao. I'll start by saying a few simple things. First, it hasn't yet been twenty-four hours, so we can still chat a little. Second, no one is preventing you from requesting a lawyer, no one has attempted to pressure you into a confession, and no one has mistreated you, is that correct.—Of course, if you must say that my bureau's dining hall has injured your appetite, there's nothing I can do. We truly don't have the budget to order take-out.—On this subject, I suppose Attorney Zhao has no other objections?"

Before sitting down, Luo Wenzhou had already snatched away Zhao Haochang's opening remarks.

The corner of Zhao Haochang's eye twitched, as if he was infuriated by this attitude. He resisted displaying it and, in a deliberately slow voice, said, "You look rather familiar, but I'm afraid I've forgotten your name. How should I address you?"

Luo Wenzhou paused. Not only did he not get angry, he laughed. Then he lazily adjusted his posture and answered as if it didn't matter to him. "Who, me? Seeing that you're so clever, how about you take a guess."

Zhao Haochang had been sitting too long. He was rather stiff, which impaired his originally skillful sneer. He pulled at the corners of his lips, not very naturally. "That shouldn't be necessary. I don't think we're destined to see much of each other."

Luo Wenzhou spun the pen in his hand. "You snuck into the East Flower Market District's Gemini Building in the middle of the night and damaged the security railing on the rooftop of Tower A, nearly resulting in..."

Zhao Haochang impatiently interrupted him. "I've already said, I didn't have any idea that there'd be someone there that night, or that they'd want to jump off the building in just that place. You say I destroyed public infrastructure, endangered public safety—OK, I admit it, I'm sorry, I can write a self-examination, a fine is no problem, either. Officer, not everyone can be paid out of the taxpayers's dollars. Those of us that have jobs are very stressed, sometimes in order to 'chill out,' you know, we may very well be a little irresponsible. I've learned my lesson, all right? Thank you, don't keep sending different people here to repeat the same words to me."

Having listened to this lengthy speech, Luo Wenzhou, smiling, said, "In all my years of work I've rarely come across a criminal suspect as cocky as Attorney Zhao."

Zhao Haochang said coldly, "Officer I-don't-know-who-you-are, could I ask you to pay attention to your diction? Why do you insist that I'm a 'criminal suspect?'"

Luo Wenzhou pulled back his smile and crossed his arms over his chest. "There are still a few other things I would like to consult you about, Attorney Zhao."

Zhao Haochang paused, gaze resting on his body language for a moment, then very magnanimously nodded and made a "go on" gesture at him.

"First, the lady who nearly fell off the building yesterday looked at your photograph and identified you. She says your original name is 'Zhao Fengnian' and you just happen to come from her hometown. Is that right?"

When Zhao Haochang heard the name "Zhao Fengnian" his breathing became noticeably strenuous, and his pale face stiffened so it looked like a piece of stone. His gaze, dripping venom, fixed on Luo Wenzhou.

Luo Wenzhou was entirely unmoved. He swept a bored look over the file and said, "Following her testimony, we inquired into Attorney Zhao's background slightly. We found that you were born in a rather remote little village under the administration of the T City Prefecture in H Province. You previously used the name 'Zhao Fengnian.' Your parents were both disabled, engaged in agriculture at home, and you had three younger siblings. That's a miserable history."

Zhao Haochang's expression cooled with every word he spoke.

And just at that moment, Luo Wenzhou looked up at him and feelingly said, "It looks like Attorney Zhao had it rough. I suppose you only had one or two people test into university each year there? Much less anything more, like becoming so respectable.—Also, I find that Attorney Zhao's speech doesn't have any trace of an accent. Was your speech so Western-flavored at home?"

Zhao Haochang's hands, laying on the table, began to tremble uncontrollably. He seemed to be planning to stand up and beat Luo Wenzhou to the floor.

"Oh, I forgot," said Luo Wenzhou, pouring more oil onto the fire, "I hear you haven't been back to your hometown for many years. That's not right, Attorney Zhao. Your fellow villagers worked so hard to support you. How can you forget where you came from?"

Zhao Haochang pounded on the table, breaking off Luo Wenzhou's words. He was nearly standing, already out of his chair, leaning forward a little like a beast of prey ready to pounce—several breaths later, using some enormous quantity of willpower, Zhao Haochang suppressed his violent rage and sat back down.

"Is that so? What a coincidence. I didn't know." Each word Zhao Haochang spoke seemed to carry the scraping of enamel. "I left home many years ago and don't remember those people very well. Also, officer, I completed university entirely on student loans and scholarships. I saved for travel expenses myself. I didn't trouble anyone to 'support' me. As for whether I do or don't go back to my hometown, you seem to be going beyond the scope of your concerns, right?"

Luo Wenzhou said, "Upholding community order and good customs is also one of our jobs."

The corners of Zhao Haochang's mouth stuck up. "So you've established a neighborhood committee. No wonder so many major cases go unsolved."

"I accept your criticism." Having succeeded in angering the other party, Luo Wenzhou shrugged indifferently and changed the subject. "Speaking of major cases, there's another matter I want to ask Attorney Zhao's guidance on."

He pulled a photograph out of the file and put it in front of Zhao Haochang. "This girl is called Chen Yuan. Some time ago she died of a drug overdose. She went to your school."

In his rage, Zhao Haochang seemed not to have expected this twist. "That's very regrettable," he said dully.

"The circumstances of her death were unusual. Two weeks prior to her death, she contacted a university classmate called Cui Ying and passed on to her some important evidence identifying the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau's Director-General as having participated in illegal activity." Luo Wenzhou looked him in the eye. "We just went to pay a call on this young lady. She submitted the evidence to us. She also mentioned you."

Zhao Haochang's eyes flickered and the fist laying on his knee tightened, as if he was quickly recalling his own oversights.

Luo Wenzhou said, "Cui Ying says that she shared Chen Yuan's story with you, and you prevented her from reporting it. Did this take place?"

"It did." Zhao Haochang quickly settled on a method for responding and sat up slightly straighter. "I really did watch that video, it truly was horrifying, but where should I have reported it? To their superiors? Officer, even sitting here across from you right now, I still don't know whether you're vermin with a human exterior. What if you're in it with them? Wouldn't reporting be walking right into a trap? We common folk of limited abilities can only play it safe. Is there anything wrong in that?"

"There isn't. What did you do after you found out about this?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

"I went to make an inspection," said Zhao Haochang, "but I didn't dare to go too deep, because one time when I was pretending to drive past, some people I suspected of being drug traffickers kept their eyes on me for a long time. I realized then that this was a very dangerous business and warned Cui Ying that she absolutely couldn't say anything about it. We could only act like it had never happened."

Luo Wenzhou lowered his voice slightly. "Cui Ying said that you once told her, if you'd killed someone, you'd leave the body in one of the drug trafficking locations in the West District, and they wouldn't dare to investigate.—Did this take place?"

The corner of Zhao Haochang's eye began to twitch nervily. It was a long time before he took a deep breath. "I've been good to Cui Ying. She's a member of my school, in the same tradition as me. I've always tried to protect her. I don't know why she'd say that. It's clearly only a joke. I may have said it, and I may not have said it.—Although if a joke can be used as information against me, used to fabricate a charge against me... I really don't know whether this is modern civilized society, or whether I'm in the Great Qing Dynasty's literary inquisition..."

Luo Wenzhou suddenly interrupted him. "Where were you on the night of May 20th?"

Without even thinking about it, Zhao Haochang responded, "First I went with some friends to the Chengguang Mansion, then a friend took me back to the office to work overtime. I only left close to midnight."

"Where is your office?"

"Wenchang..."

"We got the security camera record from the Number 34 bus." Again Luo Wenzhou didn't let him finish. He pressed on, "He Zhongyi, the victim in the '520' case, got off the bus at Wenchang Intersection between nine and ten that night and then was murdered. In order to confuse the issue, the murderer dumped his body in the West Flower Market District—right at one of the drug trafficking locations. Do you have anything to say about that?"

Watching the interrogation room's surveillance feed, Tao Ran quietly said, "He was infuriated from the start and later he didn't expect that Cui Ying would 'sell him out.' Just now he was a little out of control. When Captain Luo mentioned the Number 34 bus footage, he clearly panicked."

Fei Du pushed up his glasses. "Ge, does you letting me in here accord with regulations?"

"It's fine," said Tao Ran, "Director Lu specially authorized it. He's busy dealing with Wang Hongliang right now, or else he'd be here in person to get a look at you."

Fei Du thought about it. He didn't have any interest in granting an interview to a middle-aged man with a face full of wrinkles. Disapproving, he turned to look at Zhao Haochang.

Zhao Haochang's expression altered at first. He stiffened in place. But after a moment he seemed to realize something and put on a rather cunning smile.

"He's easier to infuriate than an ordinary person, and he also feels offended more easily, especially when others poke at his weak spots." Fei Du shook his head. "But to be able to bear it and still maintain his fundamental reason—he really is a genius. If it weren't for this business, I'd be willing to pay a high price to engage him as a regular legal adviser."

"He got off at Wenchang Intersection." Zhao Haochang slowly repeated these words. "And then what? What happened between him getting off the bus and him being murdered? You have no idea, do you?"

Luo Wenzhou slowly restrained his "pretending to be bored" expression and began to look unhappy.

"You have nothing." Zhao Haochang leaned back lightly in his chair. "A joke, a security camera record with no beginning or end, and you want to trick me into betraying something with that?"

Luo Wenzhou didn't answer. An unbearable silence suffused the small interrogation room. He seemed to be all out of tricks.

Zhao Haochang couldn't restrain his laughter, then seemed to "remember" who this policeman at his wits' end was.

"Captain Luo, your solving of cases is too sloppy," he said, reaching out the diamond-inlaid brand-name watch on his wrist, tapping it towards Luo Wenzhou. "It hasn't been twenty-four hours yet. I see you have nothing else, so can I leave early? If not, you can also give me a bed. I'd like to lie down."

Luo Wenzhou inexplicably disliked his movement of tapping the watch. He gazed at him silently.

His expression amused Zhao Haochang to the greatest degree. He had succeeded in suppressing his fury, but he didn't succeed in suppressing his complacency. "Let me give you a word of advice, Captain Luo. Not everyone is going to fall for your outmoded interrogation techniques. Don't think so highly of yourself."

Saying so, he stood of his own accord and ostentatiously adjusted his lapels.

"Zhao Fengnian," Luo Wenzhou said quietly, "don't think so highly of yourself. In the west suburbs' North 20th Town, the basement of 12 Fengqing Winery is waiting for you to return."

Zhao Haochang's smile froze on his face.

Luo Wenzhou's index finger tapped twice on the table. "Can you explain why the victim He Zhongyi's old phone would be in your house?"  

CHAPTER 32 [Julien- Thirty One]

The interrogation room's door opened, and two expressionless criminal policemen came in, flanking Zhao Haochang to each side and pressing him back into his seat. Shining handcuffs clicked, closing on his flashing wrist, the metal of the cuffs a distant echo of the metal of the watchband, the two weirdly complementing each other.

Magnificent, cold as ice, and sharp.

Looking on from outside, Fei Du narrowed his eyes and assessed, "Your handcuffs are very aesthetically pleasing. Could I get a set to take back as a souvenir?"

Tao Ran didn't catch up at once. "What do you want handcuffs for?"

Fei Du turned to look at him, then, seeming to realize he'd been indiscreet, only meaningfully curved his peach blossom eyes.

Tao Ran belatedly groped his way to the meaning of this. As a conventional man whose life contained only overtime and home loans, Deputy-Captain Tao really couldn't appreciate this bourgeois-style lakes of wine and forests of meat. Seeing Fei Du's disgraceful behavior, he strongly felt his field of vision had been polluted. He then justly reprimanded, "Talk nonsense again and you can get out."

Fei Du gave a dry cough, properly suppressed his magic powers, which were unsuited to the venue, and didn't say a word.

The ice-cold handcuffs made Zhao Haochang give a fierce shudder. He came around and, not losing hope, tried to defend himself as before. "Slow down, what house..."

Luo Wenzhou coldly interrupted him. "You want to say the house isn't yours? Attorney Zhao, that isn't what the Fengqing Winery's security cameras say."

The panic on Zhao Haochang's face could no longer be suppressed. The handcuffs clanked.

Luo Wenzhou enjoyed his expression, then unhurriedly added, "Also, who told you we lost track of He Zhongyi after he got off the bus at Wenchang Intersection?"

"No, it's...it's not possible..."

"You're under suspicion of premeditated murder and purposefully disposing of a body. Fearing that the victim's relation would recognize you, you also tried to coerce an innocent woman to publicly commit suicide, and damaged high elevation guard rails. You involved yourself in the investigation repeatedly, attempting to mislead the police and frame another person.—Zhao Haochang, the evidence of these crimes is conclusive, what more do you have to say?" Luo Wenzhou suddenly looked up and glanced at Zhao Haochang, the corners of his lips turning up roguishly, displaying a pampered lordling's scornful sneer, stabbing right at the pit of Zhao Haochang's heart.

Luo Wenzhou said, "You've worked hard and struggled so many years, you were a step away from ascending to the heavens, and then with one wrong step you slipped and became a murderer. 'What fate has ordained in the end comes to pass, what is not ordained cannot be asked.' Zhao Haochang, I pity you."

It was as if a needle had been stuck into Zhao Haochang's chest. He lost control, hysterically crying out, "You call that conclusive evidence? Did you film me killing him? Did you find my fingerprints or DNA on the phone? Zhang Donglai's fingerprints on that tie are clear as day, isn't that direct evidence? Which is solid, which is flimsy? Why are you saying it was me! Because Zhang Donglai is your director-general's relative? Because his family's rich? Isn't falsifying evidence and arranging frame-ups the police's specialty? Who knows whether you put that phone..."

Howling to the end of his breath, Zhao Haochang suddenly got a clear look at Luo Wenzhou's derisive expression. He quickly came back to himself and felt the inside of his head roar, all the blood in his body surging outwards to his stiff limbs.

Luo Wenzhou rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward slightly, attentively watching Zhao Haochang's bloodshot eyes. "Zhang Donglai's fingerprints on the tie are clear as day? Attorney Zhao, you're more capable than our medical examiners. They need to fiddle with their equipment making comparisons for ages, but you can know just by making a wild guess."

Zhao Haochang was stock-still, cold sweat slowly soaking through his sleek hair. The damp, chilly air-conditioning blew, and he shivered fiercely.

Luo Wenzhou laughed. Like a cat that had had enough of toying with a mouse, he lost interest in Zhao Haochang. He pushed his chair back and stood, indolently nodding to the two criminal policemen standing off to one side. "The criminal suspect—I suppose I can say that now, Attorney Zhao—the criminal suspect's crimes have been established. All that remains is a question of details. You guys go ahead and question him for a bit, I won't waste any more time on him."

Then he headed out. Just then, Zhao Haochang pulled at his handcuffs and, amidst the criminal policemen's scolding, struggled fiercely and yelled, "Slow down, it...it was legitimate self-defense!"

Luo Wenzhou turned and looked at Zhao Haochang almost in wonder. He suddenly thought that so-called "dignity" was only a thin piece of wrapping paper, and when all one's schemes had been exhausted, in the end the wrapping would come off with one tug, exposing the sorry body inside.—When Tao Ran and the others had broken up the mass brawl in the Flower Market District, the legal illiterate who'd made the most noise had said the same thing. Panicking, the great, glittering lawyer Zhao Haochang and the elementary school security guard Yu Lei came by different roads to the same end.

"Did I hear that right?" Luo Wenzhou tipped forward slightly. "Attorney Zhao, you, a leading light in your field, with your proper legal education, would call out 'legitimate self-defense' under these circumstances? Did the blow you dealt He Zhongyi rebound on your own head?"

Zhao Haochang's face was dead white. He stared at Luo Wenzhou with enmity and malice. Nearly grinding his teeth, he said, "He Zhongyi took part in drug trafficking. He pestered me repeatedly, there was nothing I could do. I was forced to fight back."

"He Zhongyi took part in drug trafficking?" Luo Wenzhou's voice became heavy. "How do you know?"

Zhao Haochang's cuffed-together hands lay in his lap, trembling unstoppably. He was clenching his fists tightly, nails biting into his flesh and drawing blood, but he hadn't noticed it. "I have evidence, I have evidence! I know you're investigating Chen Yuan's case, I'm an important witness! I can cooperate with the investigation, but you have to promise me leniency!"

Luo Wenzhou looked at the security camera, meeting Fei Du's gaze through the equipment.

Fei Du leaned forward, arms crossed over his chest, and gave a rather interested "wow."

"What is it?" said Tao Ran.

"He thought at first he'd won a complete victory, then he quickly experienced a fatal defeat. He panicked, became enraged, even slipped up and gave you something to use, but he's been able to get a clear grasp of the situation this fast, adjust his emotions, and work out the trade you require." Quietly, Fei Du said, "He really makes me think of a centipede in a swamp."

An insect with a hundred legs, dead but not stiffening.

Luo Wenzhou sat back down across from Zhao Haochang. "Go ahead."

Zhao Haochang took a deep breath. "I need your promise, a clean towel, and a cup of coffee."

In the interrogation room, it was a battle of wits and a series of swindles. Luo Wenzhou considered it and felt that his "promise" wasn't worth any money. Then he generously nodded. "Fine."

A short while later, an exquisite porcelain tray was brought in from outside, with a moist towel, a napkin, and a richly-scented cup of coffee arranged on it; in addition, there were tidily arrayed Western pastries and a dewy fresh flower. Smelling all this, Luo Wenzhou knew it was that bastard Fei's doing.

The clerk and the two criminal policemen exchanged helpless looks—and became indignant at the same time. They didn't even get this kind of treatment when they were on duty during the Spring Festival!

Zhao Haochang's expression changed. Looking at the flower, he seemed to recover some self-respect. This self-respect made him straighten his spine and speak decently.

"At the end of last year, in the capacity of a legal adviser, I took a team to see some clients in the East Flower Market District. I was going to be drinking that day, so I didn't drive. When we were through, I got a taxi nearby, and I was followed." Zhao Haochang unhurriedly finished eating, sipped the coffee, then let out a soft breath and closed his eyes. "Sumatran? Too earthy."

"Was it He Zhongyi who followed you?"

"Yeah, he recognized me and asked me for money." Zhao Haochang's voice had steadied. From wildly floating, his gaze had changed to firmly looking back at Luo Wenzhou. "Blackmail. He wanted 100,000 yuan."

Luo Wenzhou considered Zhao Haochang—he had a first-rate meat sack; it could be described as imposing and well-proportioned, and it was covered up with the skin of a social elite. It truly didn't seem like he could be browbeaten by someone of He Zhongyi's insignificant stature. "Did you give it to him?"

"I did. You must have turned this up in your investigation." Zhao Haochang pursed his lips faintly. After a night squatting in a little dark room, there were dark circles around his eyes, emphasizing how deeply set they were, looking unusually dismal. "My parents were both disabled. Including me, they had four children, two of whom also had problems. Starting from the time I went to middle school, there wasn't any money in the house to spend on me. I saved up to get free: carried things, did odd jobs for my teachers, picked wild fruits in the dead of night to bring to the market in town to sell... I did everything so I could complete my education, so I could one day stand out.

"But you know what they said in the village? They said we were a family of 'deaf-mutes.' Later, when I finished upper middle school and tested into university, those people saw me in a new light. My house turned into a marketplace, people coming in and out, all of them peddling their families' stupid village girls.

"But during my third year at uni, my little brother was born. My parents yearned to have another adult male around the house, but when he was born he was like my second sister, a congenitally deaf and dumb child with an intellectual impairment. It was a nightmare. From then on we once again became 'a family of idiots' to the village. It's hereditary. In the future, my children will very likely be like that too, you understand? My career was just picking up, I had a girlfriend, I loved her, I couldn't allow that sewer rat to blab in front of her, I had to give him some money to get rid of him."

Luo Wenzhou looked down, knocked a cigarette out of a package, put it in his mouth, and considered Zhao Haochang through a cloud of very clear smoke. "Sewer rat?"

Zhao Haochang's psychological quality was extraordinary. Even having come to this point, he still looked unflinchingly into Luo Wenzhou's eyes. "Officer Luo, you grew up in Yan City, right? Then you definitely don't understand what it's like to be away from home, to live in one of the West District's overcrowded rentals. I never dared to go out with my classmates, desperately earned scholarship money while I was at school, worked all the time after I got a job, all to save a bit of money to send home. My parents didn't know what it was like for me out here, all they did was constantly ask me for money. Because of my little brother's problems, they wanted to run the risks of advanced age and give me another child to raise. The people in the village whispered behind their backs, the people in the village put pressure on them, and in the end all that pressure came down on me.

"My family had nearly sucked my marrow dry, but I didn't resent them at all; I hoped their lives in the village could be a little better. I even asked for a vacation so I could help re-roof the house. But when it was only halfway done, I took a trip to the county seat, and when I came back, my home had burned down in an accident and turned into a ruin. My parents, my siblings were all gone, not one escaped... I was inconsolable, but a rumor went around the village that said that the fire had to do with me!"

He'd come to the important point.

Indifferently, Luo Wenzhou asked, "Oh? And did it have to do with you?"

The corners of Zhao Haochang's lips pursed tightly, and he flared up. "You'd ask me that? Are you a beast?"

Luo Wenzhou crossed his legs, looking Zhao Haochang up and down without anger or surprise. Only when Zhao Haochang could hardly stand it any longer did he unhurriedly tap out his cigarette ash and flatly say, "All right, you're pure and innocent, your plight is mournful, let's continue with He Zhongyi."

"I left my home, changed my name, thought I'd finally broken free of that barbaric hole, but the peace only lasted a few years before that trash He came to find me. He said it wasn't the first time he'd seen me, he'd also seen my girlfriend, he threatened that if I didn't give him the money, he'd tell Zhang Ting about my family's hereditary disease and the supposed truth about the fire." Zhao Haochang's manner, tolerably even until now, began to roil like boiling water, thick hatred even covering up the coffee's aroma, assaulting the senses as if it had physical substance. "They ruined the first half of my life, they were going to ruin the rest of it, too, all my efforts and hopes, everything would burst into nothing where those nauseating worms had crawled. Why?"

"So you decided to kill him?" said Luo Wenzhou.

"I didn't." Zhao Haochang's chest rose and fell violently. "I wanted to compromise and avoid trouble. I even got 100,000 yuan in cash and gave it to him. I only asked him not to mention me to other people. But he wasn't satisfied, he was always pestering me. I even prepared to be blackmailed for a long time, and went out of my way to request an unregistered number he could use to contact me.

"I accepted my former academic advisor's invitation and retuned to my alma mater to lead a class of shidi and shimei in real-world experience. I met Cui Ying, a girl with a gentle and quiet nature, very dependent. If she needed anything she'd ask me. One day she called me in a flurry, as if something major had happened. I listened to a few sentences, felt something was wrong, and immediately stopped her from saying it over the phone. I arranged to meet her...arranged to meet her in a private place."

"She showed you what Chen Yuan had passed on to her."

"I was very shocked, but to protect Cui Ying I ordered her not to talk about it. I went home and tossed and turned all night. Owing to my conscience, I decided to use my familiarity with the West District to verify the authenticity of the evidence." Zhao Haochang quietly said, "And there I saw He Zhongyi with another...with a very skinny young person. I lay in wait until close to evening and saw the boy sneak over to a place near West Guanjing Street. It was one of the drug trafficking locations Chen Yuan had mentioned. He was a drug addict!"

From his description, it sounded like he was talking about Ma Xiaowei.

Zhao Haochang drank a large mouthful of coffee, as if to steady his emotions. "That drug-using boy took what he had bought back home. I followed him and saw him come 'home' with my own eyes. He turned on the lights, there were shadows on the window. That He Zhongyi was sharing the drugs with him! And he went back on his word and pestered Zhang Ting and let me catch him at it!"

"You saw the time Zhang Donglai beat him up?"

"Zhang Donglai beat him up, he didn't dare to fight back, but he was looking at me the whole time," said Zhao Haochang heavily. "He wanted to retaliate, I knew it, I was scared. After that I bent my head to him again, gave him what he wanted."

"The cell phone," said Luo Wenzhou.

"He was constantly insinuating to me about it, saying he'd seen other people using it and felt envious."

Luo Wenzhou dully picked up a rollerball pen and twirled it around in his fingertips. He tapped the table with the shaft of the pen. "All right, even if he pestered Zhang Ting, how can you say solely based on some shadows on a window that he was using drugs? Do you have X-ray vision..."

"I said I have evidence!" Zhao Haochang interrupted him emphatically. "I installed two pinhole cameras in the 'Golden Triangle Lot!'"

Luo Wenzhou inside the interrogation room and Tao Ran and the others watching outside of it all stared—they hadn't found the cameras when investigating the scene.

"Of course I didn't install them on the scene, otherwise those pieces of trash would have found them a long time ago." Zhao Haochang seemed to have worked out what he was thinking. His gaze was faintly disdainful. "The West District's streets are convoluted. There are places you think a road goes all the way through, but actually it's blocked off midway. There are places you think are very well concealed, but actually there's a projecting part of a far-off building that you can see everything clearly from.—I installed one camera outside the window of He Zhongyi's apartment and the other on the roof of a nearby public toilet."

The clerk's forehead was covered in sweat; he simply couldn't keep writing.

"What did you film?" asked Luo Wenzhou.

"I filmed the course of several transactions in the 'Golden Triangle Lot.' Sometimes there were only drug traffickers; sometimes you police degenerates were there patrolling, safeguarding them."

Luo Wenzhou quickly followed up, "And the records, where are they?"

"There's a safe under the floor lamp in my house's basement, you can go investigate it," Zhao Haochang said straightforwardly. "When you're finished, you'll know I've told the truth. He Zhongyi was very careful, usually he had his friend show his face, but on the evening of the twentieth, he gave that person the phone to exchange, and it was caught on camera.—There should also be a text message record on his phone, a notification that they'd changed the location of the transaction at the last minute."

Luo Wenzhou considered him with a peculiar look, then suddenly asked, "There was a piece of paper on He Zhongyi's forehead, with the character 'money' written on it. When he went to see you that night, he had a kraft-paper envelope. Our technicians analyzed it, and the strip of paper was torn from that kraft-paper envelope and stuck to his forehead. That was you?"

"Yes." Zhao Haochang raised his eyebrows. "He followed me all the way to Chengguang Mansion, shamelessly wanted to see me under the guise of returning my money.—There was 20,000 yuan in that envelope. Officer Luo, I ask you, aside from selling drugs, where is a poor country brat going to get 20,000 yuan?"

Luo Wenzhou was somewhat speechless.

"I also ask you, if an extorting and blackmailing drug addict suddenly wanted to return your money, how would you feel? Would you accept it with pleasure, think that he'd mended his ways? He's certainly planning something else against you! He gives you twenty-thousand, it's because he wants to get two-hundred thousand, two million out of your pocket! These greedy bumpkins, what do they know but money?" Zhao Haochang's deep-set eyes were like two deep wells, hardly allowing light to pass, with bone-chilling darkness rippling inside. "I did it to protect myself, and to rid the people of an evil. Officer, where you worms and good-for-nothings had abstained, what did I do wrong?"

"Attorney Zhao's moral is correct." Luo Wenzhou nodded good-humoredly. "Could you give me the code to your safe? We'll go check the evidence of He Zhongyi's guilt."

One of the criminal policemen beside them immediately handed Zhao Haochang pen and paper. There was a cold smile on Zhao Haochang's face. He blithely wrote down the code.

Luo Wenzhou at once passed it on to Lang Qiao, who was at the 'Fengqing Winery,' and five minutes later received Lang Qiao's confirmation text.

"Thank you." Luo Wenzhou stood up and smiled at Zhao Haochang. "Attorney Zhao, I just have two things left to say. Would you condescend to listen?"

Zhao Haochang was forced to raise his head to look at him.

"First," Luo Wenzhou stuck up one finger, "He Zhongyi's autopsy report showed that he had never touched drugs. As for the phone, witness testimony says that it was stolen by his roommate."

Zhao Haochang's brow furrowed. He was about to open his mouth to dispute it. Luo Wenzhou put up a second finger.

"Second, since you used your infinite resources to place the pinhole camera outside the window of He Zhongyi's apartment, why didn't you simply put it inside the room? Then you could film him day and night, film him eating, sleeping, and defecating. Wouldn't you be able to know at a glance whether he was using drugs or trafficking them?"

Zhao Haochang froze at once.

"You're too clever, Attorney Zhao." Luo Wenzhou laughed. "Your humble servant is deeply gratified to be able to capture an asshole like you who won't shed a tear until he sees the coffin. I feel it's worth spending all the time I should be out having fun working overtime instead. As for my promise... Sorry, I'm an asshole, too. I'm only sincere in front of my wife. You... Leave it out."

Luo Wenzhou stopped speaking. He didn't feel like looking at this hypocritical painted face anymore and left the interrogation room.

Tao Ran didn't come around at first. "What did he mean?"

"Using the images, you can trace the location of the cameras." Fei Du stared unblinkingly at the crumbling Zhao Haochang. He quietly said, "He didn't care at all whether He Zhongyi was innocent, whether he was involved with Ma Xiaowei and the others. From the time He Zhongyi started his unreciprocated attentions, constantly trying to contact him, Zhao Haochang wasn't planning on letting him live."

Tao Ran's eyes opened wide. "You're saying that he sent the video from the camera outside of He Zhongyi's window anonymously to Wang Hongliang!"

"Though I don't know why He Zhongyi escaped that calamity, that certainly does tally with the trend of Zhao Haochang's logic." Fei Du watched from afar as Luo Wenzhou threw on a jacket and stiffly walked over with a cigarette in his mouth. He turned to Tao Ran and nodded. "Ge, I'm not interested in the rest. I'll be going."

Then he pushed at his glasses and unhurriedly headed out. When he brushed past Luo Wenzhou, he looked curiously at Captain Luo's rigid posture and very urbanely extended a greeting to him. "You seem to have strained your back. The elderly should look after their health."

Luo Wenzhou: "..."

He was happy and laughing, and at the same time Luo Wenzhou inexplicably felt that the Fei Du of today was almost a little more carefree than usual—maybe because he had dug out a long-festering wound; it had perhaps been painful and bloody, but it had also been a fresh opportunity to heal.

"Let me ask you something," said Luo Wenzhou. "Would you guess that Zhao Haochang was the one who killed his whole family?"

Fei Du was absolutely unwilling to cooperate and talk nicely. He mockingly answered, "Captain Luo, after all that time cheating and swindling, using hard and soft tactics, you haven't worked out who killed the Zhao family?"

Luo Wenzhou's back hurt hideously. He couldn't quite stand upright. So he very rudely put his hand on Fei Du's shoulder, using him as a human crutch. "It doesn't look like it to me. Although our Xiao Qiao'r says he preserved the arsonist's sleeve and therefore must have been at the scene, I still think that at most he watched them die without calling for help. Ordinarily, a criminal escalates. A novice will very rarely start out by tidily plotting to kill his entire family."

Fei Du froze.

Luo Wenzhou shrugged. "I wasn't alluding to you. I've already apologized."

Expressionlessly, Fei Du said, "You're pressing on my hair."

He tilted his head, slipped away from Luo Wenzhou's dog's paw, distastefully dusted his shoulder a few times, and glided away.

"Captain Luo!" A criminal policeman ran over. "Huang Jinglian saw the evidence and freaked. He gave up Wang Hongliang and the others!"

Luo Wenzhou turned around at once.

"There's also Chen Yuan's case. Huang Jinglian says that it happened because he received a package. He opened it and found a film of their whole business process. They decided they had a mole and immediately started to investigate. They found the pinhole camera hidden on Chen Yuan, and then they..."

Luo Wenzhou stared.

Perhaps Zhao Haochang had hidden the camera too well and Huang Jinglian and the others had missed it; perhaps Huang Jinglian hadn't thought that the person who had secretly filmed them would use a camera in a fixed location that they could find, so his first reaction had been to look for a mole—through a strange combination of circumstances, an innocent girl had died in He Zhongyi's place.

But the rash boy who couldn't read others's behavior hadn't been able to escape the gaze from the swamp.

"Keep questioning them." Luo Wenzhou stretched with difficulty. "See who sent that text message to He Zhongyi on the night of the twentieth."

"Yes, sir!"

The reporting criminal policeman turned and ran off.

Luo Wenzhou stood where he was for a while, thinking deeply. Suddenly he felt there was a smell around him, very faint, winding around the tip of his nose thread by thread, then quickly reaching somewhere deeper. It was the lingering end of men's Mu Xiang. Smelling it for a long time made the heart itch a little.

Luo Wenzhou searched all around and at last raised his own fingers and lightly sniffed them. He found that he had picked it up from Fei Du.

Luo Wenzhou clinked his tongue and rubbed his fingers together in disappointment. Having found the source, he didn't itch anymore, and he didn't think it smelled good. "What's the use. Waste of my damn hormones."