Luo Wenzhou looked fixedly into her eyes. "Surname Feng, full name 'Feng Nian,' or 'Feng Niange?'"
"I don't know… That's what it sounded like, but he had a bit of an accent, I don't know what the characters were, or even if the last character was a form of address or part of the name," said Zhang Ting numbly. "It was already late that day, and he suddenly jumped out, smiling so fawningly and saying weird things. He seemed a little crazy, and I didn't have anyone with me; I was a little scared, so I kept saying, 'I don't know him.' I wanted to go around him…"
"When did this happen?" asked Luo Wenzhou.
"A while ago," said Zhang Ting. "A while ago there was a kind of mentally unstable flasher running around near our company. A lot of people had seen him. Our boss even didn't dare to have us work overtime, but I happened to have something to finish that day, so I stayed a while. By the time I got downstairs there weren't many people around, so I was a little scared to start with… Otherwise I wouldn't have called my brother to come pick me up."
Fei Du remembered the delivery man he'd met at the coffee shop and suddenly couldn't quite understand something. Thereupon he couldn't resist putting in a word. "And then? Did he pester you?"
Zhang Ting nodded. "I saw my brother had come, so I went around him to cross the street to go meet them, but he suddenly started following me for some reason. I was panicking a little, so I ran a few steps and loudly said, 'Who are you, I don't know you,' and they heard. My brother may have thought he was harassing me, so he came over and hit him."
"He Zhongyi—the man in the photograph, did he fight back?" asked Luo Wenzhou.
"No," said Zhang Ting, her gaze falling as if she couldn't quite bear to go on. "He only covered his head and dodged. I saw then that he actually looked pretty young. I thought I'd been too sensitive and quickly stopped my brother."
Fei Du looked up slightly. "You went to meet…them? Who else was there?"
Zhang Ting said, "My boyfriend was driving. My brother was a little drunk."
"I see," said Fei Du, then made a perfectly right and realistic display of disappointment. "How come all the good girls have boyfriends already? Who's moving so fast?"
Luo Wenzhou frowned at him making such a weird diversion at such a time but didn't tell him to be quiet.
Zhang Ting blushed a little at his suggestive words. "It's Rongshun's Zhao Haochang, don't you know him, too?"
"The Rongshun Law Firm's Attorney Zhao?" Fei Du, seemingly inadvertently, looked past her at Luo Wenzhou. "No wonder the lawyer came so promptly."
Luo Wenzhou asked, "And after that? Did you see He Zhongyi again?"
Zhang Ting shook her head. Looking at Luo Wenzhou, she stammered out, "Captain Luo, my brother couldn't have killed someone."
Luo Wenzhou's expression relaxed. He said to Zhang Ting, "If your brother hasn't done anything wrong, we won't unjustly accuse him. Even if we were so unreasonable that we wanted to pick someone at random to unjustly accuse, we still couldn't pick our old director-general's relative, right? Rest assured: since your brother couldn't have killed anyone, nothing will happen to him here."
Zhang Ting heard him, but it was no use—the useless Zhang Donglai really wasn't easy to handle. So while she'd said he "couldn't have," inside she wasn't so sure.
"Go in and give them a statement," said Luo Wenzhou. "I'll have Lang Qiao come. You just tell her the truth. It'll be all right."
Before he had finished speaking, Fei Du had already moved slightly in front of Zhang Ting and beckoned to her like he was coaxing a child. He quietly said, "Don't be afraid. I'll come with you."
This conduct of waiting hand and foot on someone else's little sister really made it seem like he was the "brother-in-law." Luo Wenzhou couldn't stand this degenerate bourgeois lifestyle of chatting up girls for no reason. He wanted to sneer, but he was afraid of upsetting Zhang Ting again, so he had to let it go.
Fei Du accompanied Zhang Ting into the City Bureau and sat waiting outside holding a paper cup while she was giving her statement.
After a moment, Luo Wenzhou strolled over and sat next to him. "You people, calling in lawyers at the first sign of trouble. It puts us in an awkward position."
"I didn't tell them to call a lawyer," said Fei Du. Just when Luo Wenzhou was thinking in wonder that he would actually use human speech to defend himself, he quickly added another sentence that didn't sound so sensible. "If Zhang Donglai had killed someone and I wanted to get him out of it, I'd have no need for this useless lawyer; I'd give you another murderer."
When he spoke with Tao Ran, Fei Du was forever showing a sound and law-abiding aspect; speaking to him, however, it was forever the wretched and grim aspect, defying laws human and divine. Neither end seemed especially like the truth, anyway; Luo Wenzhou didn't know when he was just running his mouth and when he was telling the truth.
"You believe that money is all-powerful," said Luo Wenzhou, his expression stern and grave but his voice indolent, his manner lying somewhere between joking and proper. "Comrade, your views are very dangerous."
"If it isn't all-powerful, that's only because you don't have enough money." Fei Du's expression didn't alter. He changed the subject: "Where's Tao Ran?"
"Much obliged to President Fei for showing us the way," said Luo Wenzhou, "but the manner of showing it could stand discussion. It can't serve as evidence in court. I had to send him to find some evidence we could use. Otherwise when that lawyer you people brought forces us to release Zhang Donglai, will we have to release him or not?"
This speech was very indistinct; it sounded very much like he was giving a spy's countersign. Had the walls had ears, they would probably still have been all at sea. Fei Du, however, knew that he was talking about the cigarette ends—though he had promptly brought the cigarette ends over, in the end they were still objects of unknown origin. Even if Luo Wenzhou trusted him, the collegiate bench wouldn't. The police had to follow his clue to find other traces.
"Even if I hadn't touched them, you wouldn't have been in time to get them. You wouldn't even be able to determine whether that person was the victim." Fei Du shrugged. "Someone once said to me that 'everything that happens in this world leaves traces,' but whether you can find them depends on each side's luck. Is your luck good this time?"
Luo Wenzhou suddenly froze. The blow-for-blow probing, bantering, and hinting vanished utterly from his face. For an instant the corners of his mouth were even pulled a little tight.
Luo Wenzhou subconsciously got his cigarettes out of his pocket, thought of something, and put them back.
Instantly there was deep silence between the two of them. Neither looked at the other. They only sat side by side with a distance of about one meter between them, like complete strangers.
"The windows and doors were locked. None of the rooms showed signs of forced entry. The most advanced security system of the time was entirely untouched." Luo Wenzhou abruptly opened his mouth to speak, his voice very low and his speech very fast, as if he had already recited these words many times and could smoothly say them without missing a single punctuation mark.
"She had done her makeup and changed her clothes, even put on music. The scene had a certain feeling of ritual. There was a suicide note arranged on the writing desk next to her. It was analyzed, the handwriting confirmed to belong to the deceased. The person who had written the letter showed clear depressive tendencies, which tallied with her daily use of antidepressant medication. The deceased was an adult, with no illness or injury that may have led her to be unable to act for herself. No drugs sufficient to cause unconsciousness were found in her system. There were also no defensive wounds on her body.—That's all the evidence we collected at the time. You were the one who reported the case. You reached the scene before we did. Unless you want to tell me that you hid some evidence back then, it was without a doubt a suicide."
Fei Du didn't speak. His sitting posture seemed very relaxed—legs crossed, upper body leaning forward slightly, one hand casually lying on his knee and the other holding a paper cup that was no longer steaming. His long and slender fingers were tapping out a beat on the rim of the cup, as if there was a melody no one else could hear filling the air.
"I said to you then, 'Everything that happens in this world leaves traces, as long as it's real. Without traces to support your opinion, however much you believe in it, it's still only a dead end of the imagination.' Fei Du, you may have had a certain intuition, but we can't do our job based on intuition. My intuition tells me every day that I can make five million." Luo Wenzhou's gaze stopped on Fei Du's fingers. Then, in an almost callously objective tone, he said, "And you know, there's a theory abroad that says that if a person wants to kill herself, she may suddenly use some means to confess it to the people close to her—you heard her confession back then."
Fei Du's fingers suddenly stiffened.
Luo Wenzhou reached out his arm, pulled the paper cup out of his hand and put it aside. "If you really want to talk over this case with me, I maintain my judgment to this day—but it doesn't matter whose judgment it is. That isn't important anymore. She's been dead for seven years. When the coffin is closed, you can judge a person's life. The relevant evidence has all disappeared. This isn't going to sound good, but if she's reincarnated she'll already be attending primary school. The living can cling on without letting go; it's a form of emotional sustenance. But there's no sense in blindly clinging to the wrong course."
Maintaining his original posture, Fei Du sat without moving a muscle, as if he had turned into a statue.
Just then, Zhang Ting and the lawyer came out side by side, and Fei Du's gaze moved slightly, giving off a trace of living energy.
"I don't accept your conclusion, Officer Luo," said Fei Du.
Hearing this, Luo Wenzhou wasn't at all taken aback. He only shrugged.
Fei Du adjusted his jacket and stood to meet Zhang Ting and the lawyer. He looked down at Luo Wenzhou. There was no smile on his face; his expression was even somewhat somber. "But perhaps there's some merit in your heartfelt advice."
Luo Wenzhou was surprised, but after saying this, Fei Du once again put on his graceful mask and left with Zhang Ting. They didn't have any further interaction.
Fei Du had just opened the car door for Zhang Ting when he saw a car with police plates stop at the gate of the City Bureau. The driver got out first, pointed to the City Bureau, and said a few words. Next, a thin, middle-aged woman staggered out of the car. Her mouth was open, her face both frightened and dazed.
Her fingers clutched the car door. The printed cotton of her pants trembled faintly around her legs, which were as thin as sesame stalks.
The driver closed the car door and, half-supporting, half-pushing, took the woman towards Yan City's City Bureau.
Clutching the hand of the person next to her as if it were her last hope, the woman walked a few trembling steps, then slowly crouched down and let out a breathless-sounding sob. Then she stopped for a moment before beginning to wail hysterically. All the people passing in the street stopped; some even got out their phones.
Fei Du's brow creased lightly. He heard the lawyer chattering to Zhang Ting: "Their so-called 'serious suspicion' has no evidence to support it. Miss Zhang, set your mind at ease. I'll stay here to keep an eye on things. When the time comes, they'll have to release him."
"He Zhongyi's mother suffers from uremia. She has to go for dialysis constantly. He was the family's only source of income," Lang Qiao was saying quickly next to Luo Wenzhou. The sound of the woman's crying had the power to penetrate into the City Bureau and echo. Lang Qiao frowned as if she couldn't quite bear it. "Will she be all right crying like this? She's already sick, I don't want something else to happen."
Luo Wenzhou didn't have time to answer.
Another officer from the Criminal Investigation Team came trotting over. "Chief, the Flower Market District Sub-Bureau has sent in a request. Because the murderer is suspected of having moved the corpse, the original scene of the crime is unclear, and the sub-bureau's jurisdictional powers are limited, they want to pass the '520' case on to us."
"Captain Luo, the lawyer Zhang Ting brought keeps questioning our procedure for taking the suspect into custody. We didn't have enough evidence to arrest Zhang Donglai. Should we release him?"
"Chief Luo…"
Luo Wenzhou pressed his hand down, pressing down everyone's simultaneous talk.
Amidst the sound of He Zhongyi's mother crying, he picked up his phone. "Tao Ran, go ahead."
"Wenzhou, I've got the surveillance footage for the Number 34."