"Around ten past nine, He Zhongyi got on the Number 34 bus at the East Nanping Road stop. When the Number 34 arrived at the Wenchang Intersection stop twenty-some minutes later, He Zhongyi got off. A security camera near Wenchang Intersection caught his back. Several minutes later he walked out of range of the security cameras. He didn't show up again."
Luo Wenzhou had grown up in Yan City. When he heard the names, he understood the approximate location.
Wenchang Street was to the southeast of the Flower Market District commercial center—in other words, after leaving Chengguang Mansion, the victim had not only not gone home, he had gone even further in the opposite direction.
"I'm at Wenchang Intersection now," Tao Ran said over the phone amid the noisy din of traffic. "So at any rate He Zhongyi wasn't in the West District between nine and nine-thirty. The argument the people living around there heard at the time wasn't related to the homicide. Ma Xiaowei was wronged. What was Wang Hongliang doing snatching him up in such a hurry? If I didn't know better, I'd think the police had killed He Zhongyi and wanted to find someone to take the blame."
"Captain Luo." Just then, a criminal policeman ran over and passed Luo Wenzhou a stack of materials. "The medical examiners have sent over their report. They've deduced that the victim He Zhongyi's approximate time of death was between 9 PM and 10 PM on the night of May 20th."
"Between 9 PM and 10 PM." Luo Wenzhou took the report and flipped through it. He didn't respond to Tao Ran's suspicions. "According to this conclusion, there's a great likelihood that He Zhongyi was murdered not long after getting off the bus."
Tao Ran must have found a quiet place. The noise coming over the phone decreased significantly. "Around nine, Chengguang Mansion's dinner party was just ending. Zhang Donglai went outside; the security cameras in the courtyard caught his face for the first time. He stayed in the courtyard for a while, then went back indoors. At 9:45, the cameras in the courtyard caught him again. He spoke to a girl for a bit, and then they went into the woods holding hands."
Luo Wenzhou sighed. "I see Young Master Zhang's itinerary was really crowded. He must have been so busy he didn't have time to spare to kill anyone."
"If he doesn't have an identical twin, Zhang Donglai is cleared of suspicion. Should we release him?"
Luo Wenzhou declined to comment. He asked, "What else did you turn up?"
"There's also a cell phone record," said Tao Ran. "Let me tell you, this is a strange thing.—Didn't the victim get a phone call while he was waiting outside Chengguang Mansion? I got his number from his roommate and went to investigate his phone records. On the night of the twentieth, He Zhongyi called an unregistered number several times."
"Oh?" Luo Wenzhou raised his brows. "What's strange about that? Hadn't we already determined that the victim must have known the killer?"
Tao Ran said, "The strange thing isn't the phone calls.—That night around 9:50, He Zhongyi's phone received a text message from another untraceable number. The contents are: 'Location of settling accounts changed to Golden Triangle Lot, May 20.'—What do you think that means? Settling accounts? Settling what accounts? Settling them with whom? What is the 'Golden Triangle' Lot? I feel like that name sounds a little…"
Luo Wenzhou suddenly opened his mouth to interrupt him. "Don't worry about that for now. Wenchang Street is at the heart of the old city sector. There are a lot of people, and past nine isn't very late. Take some guys to go ask around, see if there's anyone who may have seen him."
Tao Ran froze. Before he could say anything, Luo Wenzhou had already hurriedly hung up the phone. He couldn't resist frowning at his cell phone.—Before, Tao Ran had thought that Wang Hongliang only got up to simple tricks like shifting responsibility, enjoying the benefits of his position without doing any of the work. Therefore, in order to prevent him from obstructing the course of the investigation with his lax methods, they would have to find a pretext to bring him down.
But now Tao Ran was dimly becoming aware that this case had more to it than politics.
The City Bureau's Criminal Investigation Team's movements were very orderly. Less than an hour later, the criminal policemen took up their positions, got their marching orders, and began asking around everywhere, carrying a clear close-up photograph of He Zhongyi.
This type of work was ordinarily one of the criminal policemen's daily activities. It had to be done. It was extremely time-consuming and dull, about as miserable a process as handing out leaflets by the road. They had to repeat the same words countless times, and whether they would succeed in tracking down any trace depended entirely on luck.
Because eyes aren't camera lenses; they can't retain an impression of every person they see.
And this city was too big. Everyone went around and around in the powerful current, leaving early and coming back late—most neighbors were only on nodding terms; on public transportation there was only a field of lowered heads. Through a palm-sized screen, people could observe the farce going on on the far side of the great ocean, explore fantastic stories from furthest north to furthest south, participate in all the big and small trending discussions taking place over 9.6 million square kilometers (26); every hour and every minute, they were amazingly busy. Of course they didn't have time to spare to remember one unfashionably dressed worker.
Because he really was too ordinary, too dull, not worth paying any attention to, and not worthy of temporarily existing in anyone's memories.
Dead or alive.
This time, the police force's luck had run out. Tao Ran and the others worked with the sun beating down on them, and when the sun had rolled down behind the mountains, they were still empty-handed.
"Deputy-Captain, they say they haven't seen him over here."
"Deputy Tao, we made inquiries on the street to the west, pulled up all the security cameras from the stores facing the street and watched them one by one. Guess what we got—nothing."
"There's an old man who said he may have seen him. I asked which way he went, and he pointed me towards a construction site."
Up to this point, they hadn't been able to connect the threads to show where He Zhongyi had gone after getting off the bus, nor where he had been murdered.
This young man, not twenty years old, had come to enormous Yan City less than a year ago. On the silent film of the security cameras, he had travelled an arc around the center of the city and then disappeared without a trace, dying in some unknown corner.
And when he was dead, his body still hadn't been allowed to rest. In a bizarre course of events, it had been transported, brought all the way back to the West Flower Market District—he had gone back to where he'd come from, making no impact on the flourishing sector's urban activities.
Tao Ran was at his wit's end. He had no choice but to disband the throng of criminal policemen who had been roasted by the scorching sun until oil was pouring out of them, then briefly report to Luo Wenzhou that they had failed to make any advances in their work.
"I figure I've made no headway here," said Tao Ran. "I think we ought to go back and perform an analysis of the victim… Are you out somewhere?"
Luo Wenzhou seemed to be in someone's car just now, because the sound of a car radio reporting on the road conditions was coming through the phone. The anchor was just using the process of elimination to describe "all the places in the city without a traffic jam" during the evening rush hour.
Luo Wenzhou agreed indistinctly, paused, then turned off the radio. "Or you could think of some way to keep following up on the Zhang Donglai thread."
"Zhang Donglai?" Tao Ran had been talking all day; his throat was steaming, and his brain was a little foggy. He blankly asked, "Hasn't he already been virtually cleared of suspicion?"
"Zhang Ting said that when He Zhongyi stopped her, he asked her about a mysterious individual surnamed 'Feng.' If He Zhongyi hadn't incorrectly identified him, then this mysterious individual has likely crossed paths with Zhang Ting and her crowd. Second, I don't know whether you've noticed, He Zhongyi left the area of Chengguang Mansion at about the same time that Zhang Donglai came out of the club into the courtyard for the first time. Zhang Donglai obviously wasn't planning to leave Chengguang Mansion then, so aside from getting a breath of fresh air, why did he go out?"
Tao Ran stared at first, then quickly came around. "There were people who left when the dinner party ended; he went to see them off.—You mean it's likely that the person He Zhongyi wanted to see was among the crowd of people who left then?"
"Ten points, no bonus.—And then there's that suspicious phone. The reason we found Zhang Donglai in the first place yesterday was because of that phone. Going by Zhang Donglai's character, he may not even know how to write the words 'formal apology,' but if the phone didn't come from him, then did the person who gave He Zhongyi the phone do it under Zhang Donglai's name? Or did the victim lie to his friends about it? Why would he tell such a lie?"
Luo Wenzhou had said this much on one breath of air. He took another breath and counseled, "Look, why don't you get off work? Come a little early tomorrow. Before the forty-eight hours run out, question Zhang Donglai again. I'll tell Lang Qiao to take a little team to investigate He Zhongyi."
Before he hung up the phone, Tao Ran suddenly said, "Are you in the West Flower Market District now?"
Luo Wenzhou, who was just sitting in a black cab, paused. With a smile that wasn't quite a smile, he said, "The only person on earth who can track me is my wife. Taotao, are you sure you want to ask?"
"Are you investigating Wang Hongliang?" Tao Ran ignored his nonsense. Lowering his voice, he said, "I don't want early promotion, I'm not concerned about how Director Zhang plans to fix Wang Hongliang, and I don't want to know who's going to be the next Director-General. But if someone has committed a crime, whatever his position, it's our responsibility to arrest him."
"Your responsibility right now is to catch He Zhongyi's murderer." Luo Wenzhou laughed. "All right, you little devil, if you have so many questions, let me tell you—I currently only have a suspicion that Wang Hongliang has done something wrong. No matter what his position is, labelling him a criminal based solely on the information contained in one report would be rather sloppy. I'm leading the initial campaign. As soon as I have hard evidence pointing to him, you'll all have your share of overtime. I won't leave you out."
Luo Wenzhou hung up the phone and turned to the black cab's driver, who was sitting stock still.
The black cab driver hadn't been willing to tell him his full name. He only called himself "Xiao Zhen." He was full of mistrust aimed at all the two-legged animals on earth. His gaze met Luo Wenzhou's in the rearview mirror, and he looked away quickly, pretending that he wasn't concerned with the subject of his phone call.
Luo Wenzhou said, "This case is currently under investigation. When the investigation is over, you'll be able to reveal the details as you see fit, but while the investigation is ongoing, I'll trouble you to keep them secret."
Xiao Zhen's gaze flashed. "What are you talking about? I didn't understand that."
Luo Wenzhou fixed the young cab driver with a look through his sunglasses. "Last time you told me that your big sister was murdered by Wang Hongliang and his drug trafficking gang. But I went back and looked into it and found that your sister was arrested for prostitution and later died of a drug overdose. Chen Zhen, this touches on the person in charge of public safety for a whole district and all the people working under him. We can't prosecute based solely on your words."
When he exposed Chen Zhen's full name, the young man slammed on the brakes, stopping by the side of the road.
Luo Wenzhou expression didn't flicker. "You're parked in violation of traffic regulations. If you get a ticket, I won't grant you leniency."
Chen Zhen's face was ashen, humiliation and anger mingled in his expression. He stared fiercely at Luo Wenzhou. "My sister wasn't that type of person."
Luo Wenzhou was entirely unmoved. He knocked on the car window and said one syllable at a time: "E—vi—dence."
"My sister didn't have time to tell me anything," said Chen Zhen. "She wasn't sleeping at night then, and she was always afraid of something. I asked her, but she would only get mad at me and tell me to mind my own business. I…I overheard her talking to someone on the phone…"
"Who?"
Chen Zhen rubbed his eyes and quickly shook his head.
Luo Wenzhou passed him a tissue. "Now, have you ever heard of the Golden Triangle Lot?"
Chen Zhen froze.
In the Fei Clan Building, a secretary knocked on the door of Fei Du's office and went in. "President Fei, Rongshun's Attorney Zhao is here."
Fei Du nodded. "Right on time. Ask him to come in."
Since she had started working for Fei Du, the secretary hadn't worked overtime. She had also never seen him receive work-related guests at this hour. She couldn't help feeling a sense of novelty.
Smiling radiantly, she asked the guest to come into Fei Du's office. She poured tea and surreptitiously examined him. She found that this Attorney Zhao was exquisitely dressed and could be described as tall and handsome, but he had a particular kind of youthfulness about his countenance; the combination of the two factors gave him a particularly pure-hearted quality.
The secretary had always been aware that rich kid Fei shunned neither men nor women, and that he especially liked the quiet and refined, not too forward type; she "saw the light" at once. Before the light had passed, she met Fei Du's not quite smiling gaze. The secretary stuck out her tongue, then quickly took on the professional discretion of a palace steward calmly kneeling to one side, minding her own business, seeing nothing.
Rongshun were the company's legal advisors engaged in connection with some special projects. Chin in his hand, Fei Du solemnly listened to Attorney Zhao carefully explain several documents fast enough for spit to fly, then mercilessly went off topic: "How is Tingting doing?"
Attorney Zhao paused. He seemed not to have expected that this ignorant and incompetent second generation patriarch wouldn't even be willing to pretend for a while. But he quickly recovered. With his expression unchanging, he put down the materials he had spent so much time preparing. "I hear from my criminal law colleague that the police's evidence was insufficient to make an arrest. President Zhang should be released tomorrow. It'll be all right. Tingting has only suffered a false alarm. Thank you for your concern."
"Tingting isn't the only one I'm concerned about." Fei Du smiled ambiguously at him, the smile containing a thousand words, but he didn't say anything else. "It seems that at the critical moment, knowing talented young people like Attorney Zhao really is very useful.—Would you do me the honor of dining with me?"
Attorney Zhao frowned faintly, as though he was planning to refuse, but Fei Du had already stood up and, brooking no argument, was gesturing at him in invitation.
The Fei Clan was Rongshun's largest client. The two sides had been working together since before Fei Du had taken over. They had always been one of Rongshun's major bankrollers. Zhao Haochang couldn't afford not to defer to him; he very unwillingly stood up.
"I didn't know whether you had any dietary restrictions, so I had them throw something together." Walking ahead of him, Fei Du seemingly carelessly said, "Oh, Haochang, where are you from? Are you a local?"
This was a very easy to answer bit of idle conversation, but Zhao Haochang was suddenly caught up short. Only when Fei Du noticed something wasn't right and turned to look at him in surprise did Zhao Haochang finally avoid his gaze and murmur an indistinct "right," not answering the question either way.
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Author's Note:
(26) It won't surprise you to learn that this is the area of China.