"Xia Xiaonan? I just had a look at her. She still hadn't woken up." The criminal police officer responsible for keeping watch at the hospital had just eaten dinner and was walking unhurriedly towards the inpatient department. "What's wrong, boss? Didn't you say we were going to wait a few days for the child's psychological state to stabilize before questioning her?"
The sharp sound of car horns came over the phone. Luo Wenzhou quickly said, "Xia Xiaonan isn't an eyewitness, she's one of the suspects. Get your eyes on her!"
"Huh? Who? You're saying Xia Xiaonan is…"
As he pushed open the door of the hospital room, the policeman's voice abruptly came to a halt.
Luo Wenzhou's heart sank.
"Boss, Xia Xiaonan is gone!"
Luo Wenzhou stamped on the gas pedal.
"Xia Xiaonan is a local. Her father was called Xia Fei. He had lung cancer and couldn't go out and get regular work. He made a bit of money working snack counters. He died a few years ago. Her mother spent all her time looking after a sick person and a household full of children and the elderly. She must have been rather depressed and taken things badly. She died jumping off a building." Fei Du had his phone on speaker. Tao Ran's voice came over the line. "All the appraisals this girl has ever gotten have basically been 'sensible' and 'introverted,' and her grades have always been very consistent. One of those students who goes to class even when she's sick and wears her uniform when she's on vacation. For children like that, studying and attending a good university is the only way to change their fate."
"Does her family have any involvement with the 327 case or Lu Guosheng?"
"No, they're just ordinary common people. Aside from being rather tragic, there's nothing special about her family. The last three generations haven't been near Lotus Mountain. They don't even have relatives around there. I have no idea how she could know Lu Guosheng, or what kind of grievance she could have against Feng Bin that would make her want him murdered and dismembered."
Luo Wenzhou finished dispatching his troops and hung up his phone, turning to Fei Du. "You mentioned schoolyard bullying. Is it possible that Feng Bin was bullying her, so she wanted to use every possible means to get revenge?"
"Have you had a handwriting analysis performed on Feng Bin's letter? If you're sure that the letter was written by him, then I don't think that's it. That letter doesn't like the tone of a victimizer," Fei Du said. "Anyway, wasn't Xia Xiaonan scared out of her wits? If she set this up, then her acting is too good."
Perhaps out of the habit of being a boss, Fei Du had a profound understanding of structuring his words in a way superiors would like—he very rarely brought up messy suppositions to upset others' trains of thoughts. He would give his conclusion if he had one; if he didn't have a conclusion, he could present a clear analysis of the course of his conjectures. It was very straightforward.
Luo Wenzhou looked at him in the rearview mirror, then said to Tao Ran, "Contact their homeroom teacher. Then there's the other runaway students. Get in touch with their guardians and arrange for permission to talk to them.—We're almost at the hospital."
"All right," Tao Ran agreed. Then, somewhat hesitantly, he asked Fei Du, "What do you mean by the tone of a victimizer?"
His body language very relaxed, Fei Du leaned back in the passenger's seat, the passing lights now bright, now dim on his face. An irrepressible fragrance of chestnuts wafted off the closely-woven fibers of his wool coat.
"Even when victimizers grow up, learn 'political correctness,' and start to worry that their own children will be bullied, denounce schoolyard bullying in line with mainstream society, when they recall their own conduct from their youth, there'll still be a kind of bragging in between the lines of their words. Because subconsciously, they don't believe that was victimizing; they think it was an accomplishment—so-called schoolyard bullying in the final analysis is the social order within a community."
Unless one day they suffered from the same circumstances.
"But the teacher and parents were all just here, and they were in a public security bureau," Tao Ran said. "If people really have been bullying them, why didn't the children tell us?"
Fei Du laughed. "Tao Ran-ge, a sealed-off boarding school can become a sort of ecological environment, forming its own rules and 'laws.' What you think of as the natural patterns of behavior may be inconceivable to others—for example, if you told the ancients two thousand years ago that we actually live on a globe, would any of them have believed you?"
Luo Wenzhou turned the steering wheel. The hospital was already visible up ahead.
At first they had thought that Xia Xiaonan was a surviving eyewitness and hadn't sent too many people to keep an eye on her. They'd only been worried she would have no one to look after her and had left someone to accompany her at the hospital. A group of people from the City Bureau was just now hurrying over one after another, the police cars further blocking up the already crowded parking lot.
"Her grandfather was staying with her, so I went out to have dinner." The police officer who'd been ordered to watch at the hospital looked vexed. "The old fellow went to the bathroom while I was gone. He can't move very well, so it must have taken him about ten minutes. And she ran away."
There was a little garden set up in the inpatient department to give the patients a place to move around in. The building's security cameras had caught Xia Xiaonan silently leaving her hospital room. She'd crossed the little garden and gone over the stone wall. They didn't know which direction she'd gone in.
Xia Xiaonan's grandfather's forehead was covered in sweat. He stood trembling, leaning on his wheelchair, babbling something incomprehensible at length. Seeing that no one could understand him, he simply yelled in his urgency, like an inferior mythical beast that had mistakenly wandered into the human world, ugly and helpless.
A criminal policeman was about to go up to him. Luo Wenzhou blocked him. "Wait. Don't tell him yet."
He went up to the old man. The old man cast aside his wheelchair, tottering towards him, shouting a lengthy tirade. Seeing that Luo Wenzhou didn't answer, he at last remembered that he was half a mute and that the person coming towards him couldn't understand what he was saying. Then he tugged at Luo Wenzhou's clothes in frustration, helplessly closed his mouth, and began to cry.
Luo Wenzhou patted his hand. "Sir, aside from school, where would Xia Xiaonan go?"
The old man moved his stiff tongue, forcing out a long syllable: "…home."
"Just home? Does she never go anywhere to enjoy herself? Are there any friends whose houses she drops in at?"
Hearing this, the old man suddenly filled up with sadness. Without any warning, he opened his mouth with its missing teeth and began to wail.
The coldest frost of the year sorrowfully descended, covering the longest night of the year.
It was as if a light snow had fallen.
Luo Wenzhou went with some people to take Xia Xiaonan's grandfather home. At the same time, obtaining the old man's permission, he went into Xia Xiaonan's room—it was called a room, but actually it was just a bit of space partitioned off, just big enough to put a bed. There wasn't even a door, only a curtain for some light covering. The "nightstand" was an old abandoned sewing machine. There was a cheap pink plastic pen on it, the only thing in the room that made it look like it belonged to a young girl. There were no surplus cupboards in the room; her few pieces of old clothing were gathered at the bedside, covered with a piece of white cloth. The space under the bed was full of books, most of them textbooks and exercise books; not even the ones from elementary school had been thrown away.
Fei Du bent down and picked up an exercise book to flip through it. He saw that all the empty space in it had been written full of notes. The handwriting was beautiful and tidy. In some places there hadn't been enough room to finish writing, and she had even used small slips of paper in layer after layer, making the two-hundred page exercise book as thick as a dictionary of modern Chinese.
He skimmed Xia Xiaonan's notes. He could clearly feel that the child's logic wasn't very clear. Any slightly difficult subject required a great deal of analytical notes for her. It was evident that her abilities were rather average; her consistently excellent grades had come from an investment of time and energy.
Luo Wenzhou said, "What do you think?"
"Tao Ran was right." Fei Du closed the exercise book. "She really is one of those girls who goes to school when she's sick and wears her uniform on vacation.—If Feng Bin's murder is connected to her, it's likely she was compelled."
"Supposing she was compelled, where would she have gone now? She isn't home, and she isn't at the hospital. I sent someone to watch out at the school, and there's no movement so far. This Xia Xiaonan doesn't have any friends she could open up to normally…" Luo Wenzhou's tone changed. "Could she have gone to find the person who compelled her?"
"Find him and do what? Settle the score? Give him a beating or arrest him and bring him to justice?" Fei Du looked at him helplessly. "Shixiong, if her way of thinking was like yours, she'd long ago have proclaimed herself hegemon of the school. Who would dare to compel her?"
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
Fei Du's tongue had perhaps achieved spiritual enlightenment. Before, when they hadn't gotten along, even if he'd agreed with Luo Wenzhou's views, he'd agreed in a scathing and sarcastic way. Now that they were getting on, even if his views were different, he could still retort in a way that would put Luo Wenzhou entirely at his ease.
Luo Wenzhou's voice softened in spite of himself. "Then where could she have gone?"
Fei Du didn't answer at once, his gaze searching around Xia Xiaonan's little room that was like a snail's shell. He saw a smudge on the tablecloth hung over the broken sewing machine at the bedside, like the mark of someone frequently rubbing it over the years. He pulled away a corner of the tablecloth—it was the box for needles and thread.
There was a small picture frame in the needle and thread box with an old family photograph inside. On the paper backing of the picture frame was written: "For my daughter Xiaonan." The handwriting looked a little more mature, but it was still somewhat similar to Xia Xiaonan's writing.
"Fro…ha…ma-ah." The sound of panting came from behind them. Xia Xiaonan's grandfather had come to the door at some point and was staring at them.
Just then, the photograph slipped out of the opened frame. There was a letter pressed behind it—it was the suicide note Xia Xiaonan's mom had written before her death.
Fei Du slowly looked up. "Tao Ran said her mother died jumping off a building. Where did she jump from?"
Luo Wenzhou gave a jolt of horror.
The sound of police sirens swept by, leaving a trail of red and blue afterimages along the winding highway.
"Xia Xiaonan's mother was called Sun Jing. She worked at a junior middle school when she was alive. She jumped off the school's administration building. I've already sent you the address," Tao Ran said quickly. "The firetruck and ambulance will be there soon!"
"The Forty-third Middle School." In the car, Fei Du read through the brief account Tao Ran had sent. "The school Xia Xiaonan went to. When her mother jumped, Xia Xiaonan was at self-study—you could see the classroom from the administration building. Perhaps she wanted to have a last look at her daughter."
"Her mother extricated herself, leaving behind a house full of children and the elderly, and she jumped off a building right in front of her child. Wouldn't Xia Xiaonan resent her? Why do you think she would follow in her footsteps?"
"It's very common. A person often becomes what he hates most." Fei Du shrugged. "The more taboo it is, the more attractive it is when a person is desperate. For example…"
Before he could finish, Luo Wenzhou suddenly grabbed his hand.