"Boss, how about we…how about we just forget it?"
Lang Qiao spoke suddenly. They all turned their heads at once to look at her.
When Lang Qiao was making an appearance as a soft-hearted policewoman, it was always an exaggerated performance, but she was excellent at glaring and threatening. She was never afraid when it came to a fight. Aside from starvation and cilantro, there seemed to be nothing she feared. The words "forget it" didn't seem to be in her dictionary.
"Wang Xiao isn't willing to show herself, so let her be." Lang Qiao paused, then continued, "Isn't the important point for us Feng Bin's murder? We have other lines of inquiry—after all, Xia Xiaonan told us that it was Wei Wenchuan who put the tracking device on her phone. If this Wei Wenchuan really is connected to Lu Guosheng, then he couldn't have plotted this on his own. However bad he is, he's still a student, he still has to go to school and live there. He can't possess such vast resources. Why don't we focus our investigation on his parents?"
"That line of thought makes sense." Tao Ran frowned. "But while a homicide is one case, the other things are also criminal cases. We can't pick and choose among cases by severity, can we? I don't remember criminal law having a principle of catching the big and letting the little go."
Lang Qiao opened her mouth, then swallowed down her words.
Luo Wenzhou said, "What's wrong?"
"I know we have to investigate things when we encounter them, but…" Lang Qiao hesitated, pausing. "Never mind a child, even an adult encountering this kind of thing wouldn't necessarily let others know. It's already bad enough for her. I feel like going to compel her like this is rather…rather hard-hearted."
Because a victim always seems to have done something wrong; it's always a matter of "there must be something to hate about a pitiful person."
As soon as one audacious rapist came along and marked her as "weak and easily bullied," hundreds of thousands of rapists would begin to stir; even if they didn't dare to put the theory into practice, they'd mentally flock around to have a look, peeling off her clothes and stamping on her ten thousand times.
Luo Wenzhou was about to speak when a colorless voice from behind interrupted him. "Captain Luo."
Xiao Haiyang walked over stiffly, tightly holding a kraft-paper folder. Without making a sound, he held it out to Luo Wenzhou.
Luo Wenzhou looked at him, not reaching out to take it. "What's this?"
"The self-examination I wrote," Xiao Haiyang said dully. "I request to return to the team."
Tao Ran was bewildered. "What's Xiao Xiao writing a self-examination for?"
Xiao Haiyang looked at him blankly. In the ways of the world, Little Glasses was as sluggish as an inert gas; he didn't realize why Tao Ran didn't know.
Luo Wenzhou deftly opened the folder and skimmed his masterwork. Though Xiao Haiyang ordinarily didn't especially like talking to people, his writing style was something else; it was simply ceaseless chatter. This thing was nearly ten thousand characters long, all written by hand, a thick stack of writing paper.
Having skimmed through it once, Luo Wenzhou laughed coldly and smacked the epistle against Xiao Haiyang's chest. "Who told you I'd let you return to the team if you wrote a self-examination? Are we playing house? Go away and cool your heels."
Xiao Haiyang, like a helpless, near-sighted jiangshi, stood where he was with his whole body tense, his face turning red; he was a freshly boiled jiangshi, too.
Fei Du shook his head, went around him, and was about to go into the office to pour a cup of coffee and warm up when someone called him to a halt. "Is that…President Fei?"
Fei Du's brow furrowed. But in the time it took to turn his head, realistic happy surprise appeared on his face. "Oh, President Wei!"
Luo Wenzhou looked in the same direction as him and saw a middle-aged man who could have been called lean. He was immaculately dressed, with slightly sunken cheeks and long, narrow brows. His upper eyelids looked very unusual; they seemed to have been carved by a hatchet and hardly curved at all; they were only sharp horizontal lines. When he smiled, even his smile was weighed down by those peculiar eyelids, making him look like a jackal who'd just finished drinking blood.
So this was Wei Zhanhong.
Wei Zhanhong looked at Fei Du in faint astonishment. "What are you doing at a public security bureau first thing in the morning, President Fei?"
While Fei Du hadn't widely publicized what an uncommon school he'd ended up studying at, he hadn't purposefully concealed it, either. If you took a bit of time to inquire, you would be able to find out. These sons of the wealthy wasted time and money all day and went to play in any pigsty; there wasn't anything surprising here.
But seeking novelty was one thing; it wasn't a very good idea to let people know he meddled in cases.
Fei Du felt rather regretful—with Wei Zhanhong and his son here, he couldn't hang around the City Bureau.
"Came to drop someone off." Saying so, Fei Du gathered up his collar, which was hanging loose. Lowering his voice, he gave Wei Zhanhong a very meaningful expression. "Isn't that a good way to ask forgiveness for making a person unhappy last night?"
Wei Zhanhong gave a dry cough, his gaze sweeping over the criminal police officers not far off, feeling that these shameless rich kids really were outrageously bold in their lust and would dare to hit on any sort of person. "You young people…"
"There are lots of benefits." Fei Du drew close and spoke into his ear, saying in a low voice, "It feels different, and bodies that exercise constantly are very good. But most importantly…there's quite a few things you can accidentally find out in advance."
Wei Zhanhong's expression changed slightly, remembering how after Zhou Junmao's death, the Fei Clan had been the first to react.
Fei Du took half a step back, brushing his thumb against his lips, displaying a faintly visible coquettish smile.
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
He was quietly watching a certain person's performance.
Fei Du, seeming very concerned, asked, "Though what are you doing coming here during the weekend?"
A faint wry smile appeared on Wei Zhanhong's face. He reached over and pushed the teenage boy standing behind him to the front. The boy had the same thin lips and sharp chin as Wei Zhanhong, but he was much better looking than his father, like a student chairman in an idol drama. He wasn't at all shy in front of strangers, smiling before he spoke, greeting Fei Du with perfect courtesy.
"Children are all debts." Wei Zhanhong sighed. Perhaps he was answering Fei Du, and perhaps he was saying it for the police to hear. He was deliberately raising his voice. "It's this disappointing brat who's been stirring up trouble at school and bullying other children so badly they couldn't stand it and ran away—I ask you, what is he up to? It's because he hasn't been brought up properly. I'm ashamed. I brought him here to cooperate with the investigation."
The young Wei Wenchuan was unmoved, his expression calm. He only fittingly lowered his head a little.
Wei Zhanhong slapped his back. "What did I teach you at home? A fly won't sting a seamless egg. This is happening because you've done something wrong. If you hadn't been bullying your schoolmates, where would these rumors have come from? Where would this trouble be coming from?"
The tips of Fei Du's eyebrows moved. He put in a word. "Rumors?"
"There's a girl at their school," Wei Zhanhong said in the tone of one saying something too embarrassing to mention, frowning at Fei Du. "Because of this business, there are some rather unpleasant rumors going around… We're all right, but if this all gets out, it'll look bad for the girl, won't it? I ran into the girl's parents at the door when I was on my way in. They said there's nothing in any of these rumors."
How would a big boss like Wei Zhanhong, daily occupied with a myriad of state affairs, know ordinary city folk like Wang Xiao's parents?
"Bullying other children," "cooperate with the investigation," "rumors"… On the surface he was an old-style father with high expectations, but actually he was hinting to the City Bureau's criminal police officers that the so-called "group sexual assault," whether it had taken place or not, could only be a "rumor"; no matter what the truth was, that would be the outcome.
Wei Wenchuan was young, after all. His subtlety wasn't profound enough. Hearing these words, he couldn't keep from showing some satisfaction on his face.
Lang Qiao's expression turned grim. Luo Wenzhou lifted an arm to block her.
"Tao Ran, take them inside," Luo Wenzhou ordered. Not looking at Xiao Haiyang, he walked up in front of Fei Du, took something from his pocket, and gave it to him. "Here are the car keys. Don't hang around getting in the way of public business. Beat it."
Fei Du took the thing and smiled, glancing at Lang Qiao and Xiao Haiyang, who were subdued by Luo Wenzhou's public acknowledgment. Then he kissed his fingertips and pressed them to Luo Wenzhou's lips. Before Luo Wenzhou could knock his hand away, he quickly retreated, floating off.
Luo Wenzhou said, "What are you looking at! Get to work!"
Ten minutes later, the dejected Xiao Haiyang, turning his head three times for each step he took, walked away from the City Bureau's busy Criminal Investigation Team. He was as thin as a bamboo pole and looked like a stray dog, almost seeming lonely as he walked through the rather desolate-seeming weekend morning street. He'd known that he might be fired over this, but he hadn't given up hope, trying to rescue himself…but he seemed to be going about the rescue in the wrong way. He felt that Luo Wenzhou had become even angrier when he'd seen him.
But if he couldn't be a police officer, what would he do?
Xiao Haiyang's steps stopped on the pedestrian crossing, noticing that he didn't seem to be feeling the earth-shattering pain of being discharged from public employment—Fei Du had been right. This job and Gu Zhao had been a heavy yoke weighing on him all these years; when he once put it down, before he could feel lost, he first felt faintly freed.
"Am I this kind of person?" he thought silently.
Suddenly, a car on the cross street honked at him. Xiao Haiyang at first thought that he was blocking the way and, hastening his steps, walked over the pedestrian crossing. Then he looked again and saw that that seemed to be Captain Luo's car. The car window rolled down—anyone who came along could have seen Fei Du, just shooed away by Luo Wenzhou, showing his face.
"Get in," Fei Du said.
"No need, my house isn't far," Xiao Haiyang said. Then he remembered something and stiffly added, "Thank you."
"I don't want to take you home." Fei Du laughed. "I'm getting ready to go to that girl Wang Xiao's house, and I don't remember her recorded address clearly. Do you remember it?"
Xiao Haiyang stared. By the time he'd pulled himself together, he was already sitting in Fei Du's car.