CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF NECROPHILIA AND SEXUAL ASSAULT TO A CHILD
During the visit to the second orphanage, Leo successfully found the person who knew the inside story. He was an administrator in his early fifties with clear thinking and spoke articulately.
He took the synthesized photo and after comparing it with the old archives, he said, "It's that child, Roy Lin, whose Chinese name is Lin Qingzhu. He was admitted to our institution in 1997 at the age of 9. He left quite a deep impression."
"Nine years old? Did he got adopted immediately then?" Leo asked.
"When he first came here, his mental condition wasn't that good. I heard that he had been under the care of the Children's Hospital psychiatric department for more than a year because all of his family members had been killed. When he became more stable, he was sent to us.
He was a beautiful and intelligent child, but his psychological state discouraged many adoptive families. Look, these are the exact records. A family adopted him at the age of ten, but sent him back in less than three months because he always screamed in the middle of the night in a frenzy, smashing everything in the room to the windows ......In the following years, he moved around to several homes, but none of which lasted long. The last time was in 2002, at the age of fourteen, when he was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Laugen. He stayed with them the longest, almost a year. Later, I heard that the Laugen's house caught on fire, and the child ran away from home. We tried to find him, but to no avail."
Leo touched the yellowed files, and his fingertips twitched nervously. What was recorded on it were a few simple sentences, but he could feel the sense of depression, gloom, even pain and despair from between those lines--again and again, he was given hope, and again and again, he was hurt and abandoned.
Such a cruel thing to do to a young child! Can't any of those adoptive families who claim to be so charitable give him a little more patience and love than a normal child?
There was also that strange fire. If it was really him who did that just like what Mr. and Mrs. Laugen apparently yelled that night, then what exactly did he go through in this family that he was so angry to the point where he wanted to set the whole world on fire?
"Do you make regular home visits?"
"Yes, we do it as per regulations."
"Including the year when he was at the Laugens' house?" The dark-haired agent asked with a stern look on his face.
The administrator hesitated for a moment and said, "Mr. Laugen was one of the city's police officers so he of all people should know not to violate the law. We also didn't visit that often because we thought he was in a good place since it's rare for that child to stay with a family that long ...."
Leo asked sharply, "That is to say, if the Laugens had really abused their adopted children or something similar, you wouldn't have caught it in time, or even turned a blind eye and secretly rejoiced that you had gotten rid of a hot potato?"
The administrator was shocked, stuttering as he replied, "N-no, no! If such things happen, we will definitely pick up the child, no matter what! Those children are innocent!"
"I hope so." Leo said in an icy tone, "I will continue to investigate whether the boy got abused and how the girl that the Laugens first adopted actually died. I hope you will continue to cooperate as well."
"Of course, we will do our best to cooperate with the investigation!" The man promised hurriedly.
The black-haired agent wasn't just all talk- he drove again to the community where the Laugen family was located and interviewed more people, door to door. He got a lot of fragmented clues from the neighbors about what happened back then, and piecing them together, he concluded that the probability that the Laugen couple abused their adopted children was very high. He then rushed to the Los Angeles Police Department to investigate Steve Laugen, but the other party had already retired three years ago and left the country with his wife.
It was now impossible to obtain a statement from the person concerned for the time being therefore, Leo could only turn his attention to what the orphanage administrator had said about the murder of Roy Lin's family before he was brought in.
The police department's archives had been exposed to water due to a pipe burst some years back, and part of the old files, which were only in paper form, were all destroyed, including the criminal case files from twenty years ago. For that reason, Leo had no choice but to meet the police officers who were on duty at the time of the incident but some of them got transferred out of the city and some had retired, hence it took him some trouble to find one of them.
The retired police officer had gray hair, legs, and was sitting in a wheelchair, but upon recalling the vicious case that hadn't been solved till this day, his face showed sorrow and grief.
"The killer planned well and was extremely cruel." He said through clenched teeth, as if the past, which had been away for twenty years, was approaching again together with the sickening smell of blood.
"First, he approached the victim's family intentionally to gain their trust. He then secretly made acts such as sending threatening items and killing pets to intimidate them, but openly pretended to support the gesture of protection. He did that, regularly, until the day he finally launched his attack- he first hit Mr.Lin on the head with a baseball bat, causing his death; next, he killed and dismembered Mrs. Lin, then raped her dead body; and finally violated their son, who was only under eight years old that time.
If not for the alarm that went off because of a car theft happening at that time on a nearby street causing the killer to leave in a hurry after being frightened, the child wouldn't have been spared."
"When I saw that scene, I vowed to bring the murderer to justice! But, we failed to catch him ...... and that's because of our incompetence as the police!" The old man was so agitated that even the loose muscles in both of his cheeks shook.
"Given his method of crime, I suspect that it wasn't the first time the culprit did such things. He was bold, with a fixed and patterned way of doing things- a sign that he must have done something similar-he's most likely a serial killer! I put my suspicions in the report, but it didn't attract the attention of those on the top...It was the time of the mayor's re-election, so maybe they didn't want to complicate things, and didn't want the city's people to be in a state of panic because of a rumor about a serial killer on the loose...The case was left hanging for a long time and with no family of the victims following up on its progress, it got buried in the old archives...But I have never forgotten this case, and I have never forgotten the survivor. Over the years, that child's eyes always stuck in my heart like sharp thorns. As soon as I thought of it, I felt guilty, and more than once, I regretted not standing on my ground... "
The old cop's confession didn't reach the dark-haired agent's ears.
At this moment, the disclosed details of the case he heard a few minutes ago was already occupying Leo's brain. He suddenly realized that these details had a sense of familiarity.
I must have seen them somewhere! Where? Where ......
He suddenly stood up, rushed out of the house and into the street at full speed.
Bookstores, bookstores! Is there a bookstore around here?
He couldn't see any in the immediate vicinity, so he grabbed the pedestrians passing by and asked frantically until someone pointed to the corner at the end of the street.
He dashed into the bookstore panting, and he immediately found the hardcover reprint of The Bedside Whisperswritten by Roy Lee in the bestseller area, hurriedly dropped a bill and darted out of the bookstore.
Under the tree at the corner, he eagerly tore open the plastic packaging film and flipped to one of the pages:
[...she could only cry and sob- letting himself soak in the venom of endless pain and fear.
Her side face was distorted from being compressed between a hand and the window's ledge. Only a pair of horrified and blank eyes were hidden in the cracks of her messy hair, sight unfocused caused by the constant shaking of her body.
As fragments of light and shadow jumped frantically in front of her, the dark lawn seemed to spread out beyond the window, extending to the monster-like trees in the distance, eventually melting into the deeper darkness.
She saw her mother's head, with cascading black hair, placed on the lawn like a newly unearthed mushroom.
-And her round, straight eyes were looking fixedly at her
She just stared at her- through all those ridicules, atrocious evil desires, pleas, tears, and agony, she watched unwaveringly.
Just there, staring.
Don't look at me like that! Don't look at ...... She begged her, shouted at her, called out to her, but there was no response.
Her mother's scarlet lips were just wide open without any sound.
-But she could hear her wailing.
No matter how many years passed, she could always hear her cries, echoing all day and night in this courtyard and over the house ......]
Leo finally understood everything.
In this suspenseful story, the family of victims had an innocent and cute little daughter; in the real case, the family had an equally innocent and cute little son.
He's a child who survived all the cruelty and viciousness a human being can do, with no one to give him the justice he deserved, no one to take responsibility for the evil he suffered and no one or anything to comfort his dying soul.
He's a child who lived alone, someone who got accepted through others' hypocrisy yet got abandoned by them repeatedly,
Until he became completely desperate.
Until a path of thirst for strength got wrested from that despair.
Until he resolutely moved forward on a bloody and twisted road.
He just kept on fighting in spite of all setbacks, with indomitable fortitude.
In the end, he became a serial killer.
Codename, 'Sha Qing'.
He had dividing parts inside him, like me. An extremely stubborn part seeking vengeance that could kill in the blink of an eye, and another part lived with other people as a harmless character.
He hid his nightmarish life in his books, secretly expecting someone to find it, capture it and destroy it, but he got disappointed in the end.
His pain was visible to the whole world, but no one paid attention to it, and no one took it seriously.
The side of him that was placed in the light was bright and illustrious, but his soul that was engulfed by darkness was lonelier than anyone else.
This is Sha Qing's past-are you satisfied, Leo?
He asked himself, in a daze, as the book fell from his fingers...
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
Sha Qing woke up from a nightmare and jumped up like a beast in an attack.
Sweat drenched his back as he panted, his mind confused...... This is the second time this month. Why do I keep on dreaming about the past that I don't even wanna recall?
He's familiar with mind tricks. As long as it could seal the dark memories in the deepest part of his mind, whether it's hypnosis or psychological suggestion, he tried them all on himself.
But now those memories were crawling through his brain again like a hideous, ugly, deadly monster, and he could hear it viciously ripping and chewing everything, trying to destroy what he had managed to accumulate to make himself look like a normal person.
He pressed his palm firmly against his forehead, as if such an action would beat the monster back into the seal.
After a long time, he let out a long breath.
He bent down and fished out three metal keys from under his pillow which he had stolen from the duty nurse's drawer before the lights went out. They can be used to open the door of his cell, an iron door in the corridor of the ward, and the door of Rafael Stoker's cell.
It was 4:30 a.m., the time when people were most sleepy.
So, he decided to act now.