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 (36).
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!"
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Author's note:
(36) A point of clarification: the "feng" in his actual name is 丰, first tone; the "feng" that Zhang Ting heard He Zhongyi say, presumably because she had trouble with his accent, was 冯, second tone, a surname.