In twenty years, Lotus Mountain had undergone a bone-flattening, skin-swapping renovation; its face now presented an entirely different appearance. The streets and buildings were seamlessly joined together, their style identically "modern," more dignified even than in the city. Only the roadside trees had not yet had time to develop their shade, dimly revealing the haste beneath the heavy makeup.
Luo Wenzhou drove a few circles before finding the nondescript newsstand.
A man wearing reading glasses was sitting inside, his back stooped, minding the stand. You could have said he was middle-aged, or you could have said he was old. Looking at his face alone, he looked like he hadn't yet reached retirement age; but his whole body was permeated with a heavy lethargy, as if he was lingering at death's door.
It was the hottest part of the afternoon. The surface of the street had been baked by the sun until oil was coming out of it. Luo Wenzhou pushed his sunglasses up to the top of his head and walked in front of the newsstand. "I'll have an iced soda water."
The newsstand's owner heard him and put aside the book he was reading. He bent down and chose a cold drink thickly covered with frost, then handed it over.
Luo Wenzhou stepped under the newsstand's sunshade, twisted open the bottle cap, and downed half the bottle in one go.
Already having worked overtime, he'd spent all day engaging in battles of wits with all kinds of his fellow professionals. Relying on Director Lu's face and carrying the banner of inquiring about the old case, he'd attacked by innuendo, trying to determine whether there was anything suspicious about the other party. They all belonged to the same system, their tricks all followed the same lines; they went back and forth, each scene comparable to a scene of palace intrigue in a television drama, severely fatiguing.
Now Luo Wenzhou's head was wooden inside. His gaze dull, he drank until he was chilled all the way through, then leaned under the sunshade, relaxing entirely.
The newsstand owner saw that he had no intention of leaving immediately and stuck out his head to say, "Hey, young fellow, I have popsicles, too. Do you want one?"
Luo Wenzhou waved a hand. "I've drunk my belly full of gas. I won't be able to eat. I'll rest here a while."
The newsstand owner said an "all right" and moved over a long-legged plastic stool for him. "Sit down, then. On a hot day like this, no one has it easy.—What kind of work do you do?"
Luo Wenzhou put the soda water bottle on his knee and lightly shook it a couple of times. "I'm with the police."
The newsstand owner had one foot up on the stand's small threshold. Hearing the word "police," he froze in place. After a long time he turned his head. He took off his reading glasses and folded them away. His lips trembling faintly, he lowered his voice. "I've applied to have the charge withdrawn. The government approved it, too."
"I know," said Luo Wenzhou. "Uncle Guo, I don't mean anything by it, I just want to talk with you about Feifei's case from twenty years ago."
The newsstand owner was Guo Heng.
Guo Heng had killed Wu Guangchuan, then had been sentenced to prison for deliberate killing. Later his sentence had been reduced, and he had been released upon completion of the term two years earlier. Naturally he had lost his job. Twenty years had passed; everything had changed. His parents and relatives had died or left. His wife had divorced him before the killing. He had no relatives or connections, alone in the world. Returned to the wholly changed Lotus Mountain…District, he was doing a bit of business to make his living.
"There's nothing to talk about." Guo Heng's face hardened. "She's been dead over twenty years, and I personally sent her killer on his way. I was sentenced, I went to jail. There it is. What else do you want to know?"
Luo Wenzhou tried to soften his voice. "It's like this. You see, I haven't come here to tear up your scars for no good reason. We've encountered a case, also involving a missing little girl. There's evidence that shows there may be a link with the old case…"
"What link?" Guo Heng asked coldly.
"A girl, eleven years old, wearing a floral-patterned dress when she disappeared. Three days after she disappeared, the criminal sent her parents a recording. Aside from a girl's crying and screaming, it contained another noise, like someone shaking a metal box full of small bells." Luo Wenzhou knew that the other was fully on his guard. Therefore he looked directly into Guo Heng's eyes as sincerely as he could, rejecting all irrelevant description, using the shortest phrases to explain the matter clearly. "The elders who had experience dealing with the old case said, the circumstances were exactly the same as when Feifei was murdered, so I wanted to ask you a little…"
He hadn't finished when Guo Heng cynically interrupted him: "You mean interrogate a little? The killer is dead, the only people left who remember this are the police and me. Of course, if something bad's been done, it couldn't possibly be the police, it can only be me, with my record."
"It isn't only you; I've already been through the policemen who handled the case," said Luo Wenzhou. "I don't suspect anything, I only want to understand in detail what happened…"
Without warning, Guo Heng's mood suddenly erupted. He roared at Luo Wenzhou, "Back then I looked everywhere for someone to talk to about this case, none of you listened, no one wanted to understand. Now I've stabbed him and gone to jail, and here you come again! My daughter has been dead over twenty years, I don't want to talk about her, I don't want to! What the fuck have you been doing all this time!"
Luo Wenzhou opened his mouth, bit back the justifications he'd nearly blurted out, then in a low voice said, "I'm sorry."
"Go away, go! Scram!" Guo Heng grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him out. "I don't have anything to say. If you think I'm suspicious, you're welcome to come and arrest me, I've been through it all before, anyway. For the rest of it, no comment. The next time you come, remember to flash your ID. If I'd known before you were the police, I wouldn't have sold you a drop of spit."
"Uncle Guo…" said Luo Wenzhou.
Guo Heng's eyes were red, and the veins at the corners of his forehead stood out. "Scram!"
Luo Wenzhou's mood really couldn't be called gentle, but at this time, even if his rage had towered to the heavens, he still wouldn't have been able to let it out.
The scorching sun directly overhead spurted its flames towards him. He shut his mouth and used the tip of his tongue to count each and every one of his teeth. Then he looked down and got out his wallet, pulled out a photograph from it, and held it in front of Guo Heng.
"This child is called Qu Tong," said Luo Wenzhou. "When school starts, she'll be attending sixth grade. Her studies are good. She was attending the 16th Middle School's recruitment summer camp a year early. She's normally very sensible, always taking the lead. It's already the fifth day since she went missing. Uncle Guo, you know what five days means? I heard that back then you made an intense study of child kidnapping cases, so you should understand that the chances of finding this child are already remote."
Guo Heng's gaze slowly fell on Qu Tong's photograph.
With twenty years between them, the two men stood opposed to each other on the street in high summer. After a long time, Guo Heng's fiercely undulating chest gradually calmed.
"But each day we don't find a body is another day we can't abandon the search," said Luo Wenzhou. "It's too sad about the children who vanished without a trace back then. We can't let what happened to Guo Fei happen again. But now we really don't have any other leads. We can only beg for your help. Do we have to wait until this asshole finishes a seventh offense and leaves traces before this can end?"
Guo Heng's expression altered slightly.
The girl in the photograph was smiling at him with her head titled, revealing a slightly crooked canine tooth. It may have been coincidence, but looking closely, Qu Tong actually had some similarities to Guo Fei.
Luo Wenzhou's tone relaxed. "I just have a few questions. I'll finish asking, and then I'll go. I won't bother you."
Guo Heng looked at him, silently pursed his lips for a moment, then turned and went into the newsstand. Luo Wenzhou hastily followed. "Did you mention the fact about the bells in the pencil box to anyone back then?"
"I did." Guo Heng had become over-agitated just now; his voice was still somewhat hoarse. "I mentioned it to the police working the case. After you abandoned it, my friends and family who were helping me keep investigating all knew some details."
"Could you give me a list of names?" said Luo Wenzhou.
Guo Heng looked at him. When Luo Wenzhou thought he was about to flare up again, the man only curled up on his chair and wearily rubbed his face. "Feifei's homeroom teacher, a relative who worked at the telephone exchange back then… Oh, some sanitation workers near the waste transfer station the phone call came from, they may have understood some of it. It's too confused. There are things I repeated so many times to so many people. I can't recall clearly."
"Then we'll pass on to something else." Luo Wenzhou got out a palm-sized notebook and sat on the long-legged stool from before. "Where did you start your investigation from then? How did you find Wu Guangchuan?"
Guo Heng's gaze went past him, falling on a small mirror hanging on the news-stand's door. The mirror reflected the man's withered face and white hair, making him in a flash feel the passage of time. He looked at Luo Wenzhou—if the young girl from back then were still alive, maybe she would be a few years older than this young man.
"The police investigation wasn't making any progress. I felt anxious, I couldn't resist going to search for myself. I went over to that waste management station a few times—the place where the killer made the phone call. Back then, garbage often wasn't taken care of quickly. It smelled awful. No one lived nearby, and no buses went past. You had to drive a car if you wanted to go there. And coming from the county town, you'd have to pass a toll road. There weren't so many people on the roads then, the police could tell where all the cars had come from. If there'd been a problem with any of them, they would have found it. So I thought then, could the person who kidnapped my daughter have come from outside? Because there was a highway from the city to Lotus Mountain that made a half-circle to avoid the mountain, and it passed nearby. Although there wasn't a road, there was a large slope. I went to look myself. A car couldn't get down, but an ordinary adult could walk down."
Luo Wenzhou said, "You're saying that the person who kidnapped Guo Fei left Lotus Mountain with the child, and on the way, for some reason stopped his car on the highway, climbed halfway down the mountain carrying the child he'd kidnapped, and went to make a phone call next to a garbage dump—why would he do that?"
Guo Heng gave a slightly taunting smile. "When I told the police working the case my idea, they asked why in exactly that tone of voice."
"No." Luo Wenzhou adjusted his emotional state. "According to your inferences, the kidnapper came from out of town—Wu Guangchuan really did come from out of town, and per the investigation, neither did he spend much time in Lotus Mountain. Then how would he be familiar with a transfer station that even the locals didn't go to? He'd kidnapped a half-grown girl, not a baby weighing a few kilograms. To leave his car in the middle of the highway and climb down a mountain carrying such a big child to an unfamiliar place to commit an offense against her—the danger is too great. How would he know there wouldn't be workers passing by to collect the waste from the transfer station? That isn't logical."
Guo Heng said, "Has your logic caught the criminal?"
Luo Wenzhou was temporarily at a loss for words.
"The police also told me it was impossible, and they established a special investigation team. I thought, a special investigation team definitely has more expertise than me, let them investigate. I only needed to wait. And in the end… Ha! There really was nothing I could do, I had to keep investigating along that 'impossible' line of thought. I went to the area around Feifei's school and asked around at all the guesthouses and hotels one after another. Their teacher helped me a lot—that teacher had come back to work after retiring. She was very old; she's already passed on. She wouldn't be the one you're after."
Luo Wenzhou said, "During this process, you found Wu Guangchuan, who'd gone to Lotus Mountain to recruit students. I heard that he stayed in the hospital at the time. Why did you suspect him?"
"Jinxiu had money and flashed it around. The teachers who came to recruit students drove over in several cars. They came together, and when they were done with their business, some went back early because they had things to do at home, and some stayed on to play around in Lotus Mountain's limestone caves. Some had left midway because they got sick. They left in several groups. I found the cheapest guesthouse around Jinxiu and followed each of them in turn." Guo Heng said, "At first I didn't suspect Wu Guangchuan, but once when I was wandering around the area, I saw a child furtively following him."
Luo Wenzhou sat up straight at once.
"A little boy wearing Jinxiu's uniform. He said there was a girl in his class who was always missing class for no reason. He was the class leader, and the homeroom teacher told him to find out what was going on. The girl hadn't gone to class, and she hadn't gone home, either. He'd clearly seen the girl go find this Teacher Wu after getting out of school before, but when he went to ask the teacher about it, he wouldn't admit it.
"I thought at once something was off. Can you understand that? If you had a daughter of your own that age who'd gone missing just like that, you'd also be sensitive about everything."
"You told a policeman who had transferred to the City Bureau about this."
"Surnamed Yang, he'd been at the Lotus Mountain Public Security Bureau. He was the only one I knew," said Guo Heng. "But he didn't believe me."
Luo Wenzhou didn't make explanations for his shifu. He only followed up, "What happened then?"
"I could only investigate for myself. The boy from Jinxiu helped me quite a bit, too. One time, the boy suddenly paged me and I ran over to have a look. I just happened to see Wu Guangchuan leading a girl. The girl was struggling, and he dragged her away…" Separated from the event by many years, when Guo Heng spoke of it, his fist still clenched. It was a long while before he forced himself to keep going. "I made the child who'd passed on the information leave and I followed them to Wu Guangchuan's house. I saw that asshole take the girl home. At his door, I saw him do some…nauseating things. I…"
According to the record in the case files, Guo Heng had pretended to be collecting the electricity bill, knocked on Wu Guangchuan's door, then stabbed him.
Luo Wenzhou said, "What was the boy's name?"
"His surname was Xu." Guo Heng thought for a while. "I think he was called…Xu Wenchao."
Luo Wenzhou said goodbye to Guo Heng. Before he'd even driven away, he hastily passed on the information to Tao Ran, telling him to summon Su Xiaolan and Xu Wenchao from that year's junior middle Year 2 class at Jinxiu Middle School; then he raced back to the city.
Meanwhile, that same day, Fei Du also happened to leave the city.
"Did you make an appointment yesterday, Mr. Fei?" The receptionist flipped through the record, sneakily looking over the attractive visitor.
This sanatorium was between the mountains and the sea and had a garden that could be described as tasteful; though it was a medical establishment, there wasn't a trace of hospital smell or the stink of illness in the reception hall. All around was brightness and cleanliness and the soft voices of pretty receptionists. The leisurely sound of the tide and a piano melody were playing.
At a glance, it simply looked like a seaside resort.
"Room 407 in the Acute Ward. Please come inside, a staff member will take you through."
Fei Du nodded to her, pulled a dewy fragrant lily from the bouquet in the bag at his side, and stuck it into the vase on the front desk. "Thank you. I think this flower goes very well with you."
Then he left behind the crimson-cheeked young lady and went inside.
The people in the Acute Ward were those who had lost the ability to move. It had a special kind of peacefulness. The steps of the medical personnel were hurried and the thick shade of trees spread everywhere. Following the signs, Fei Du came to Room 407. A doctor had been waiting for him there and greeted him familiarly: "President Fei, I guessed you would come today."
"I just happened to have some time to spare." Fei Du put the flowers at the man's bedside. "How is it?"
"Overall very smooth," said the doctor. "Although it's already been three years. The likelihood that he'll wake up is small. His family needs to psychologically prepare."
Fei Du responded without any expression. He titled his head, examined the man in the hospital bed, and civilly answered, "I know. You've gone to a great deal of trouble all these years."
The doctor met his gaze and without reason was startled. There was a moment where he thought this young man's cold and withdrawn gaze didn't look at all like he was looking at his father; it didn't even look like he was looking at a living person—he seemed to be examining a not especially satisfactory ornament that he could just as well do without.
The doctor's mind was already envisioning a complete set of "wealthy family drama" and "seizing the throne" plots. He didn't dare to speak out of turn; he said goodbye to Fei Du and hurried away.
Fei Du urbanely watched the doctor leave, put his hands behind his back, and walked a few circles around the man's hospital room. The middle-aged man in the hospital bed lay there wholly insensible, surrounded by a bewildering array of medical apparatus. He seemed to be well taken care of; there wasn't a single white hair on his head. Looking closely, his features were very similar to Fei Du's, but the temperament was completely different. Though he lay there entirely unmoving, he still gave off a keen and somber feeling, like cold marble.
Finally, Fei Du stopped in a corner of the room. There was a small calendar hanging there. The nurse must have been careless; the date was from a few days ago.
He flipped the calendar to the proper date—the last day of July. It was his birthday, and of the two people who have given life to him, one lay in a sanatorium, and the other lay underground.
Fei Du turned and for a moment looked the man up and down with an indescribable expression. Suddenly, he reached out a hand towards the man's oxygen tube.
In the peaceful hospital room, the medical apparatus let out a regular rumble.
On the face of the young man who had just given a girl a flower, there wasn't a trace of warmth.