"Impossible." In front of the investigator, Fei Du quickly restrained his out of control expression.
The investigator watched him closely.
"Impossible," Fei Du repeated. "Teacher Pan's wife did psychological counseling for me for many years. They're both very upright people."
The investigator had a thought, wanting to make him keep talking. "Perhaps you only know what they're like on the outside, not in their hearts?"
"If he'd been connected to the person who sold out his colleague, he wouldn't have resigned and gone to teach at the school. Given Teacher Pan's qualifications, if he'd stayed at the City Bureau, his position would have been high by now, and he could have gotten hold of any information right away. What can he get at school? When we propose any materials to request for consultation, we have to go through a whole series of formalities to get them. It needs the ratifying signatures of at least five people, all the way up to Director Lu. That's too much trouble."
"But Pan Yunteng himself admitted this. There's no use calling it into question." The investigator made another attempt. "Perhaps he only came into contact with the suspect after leaving the City Bureau, and perhaps he was deceived."
Fei Du frowned. "You mean to say that the true culprit framed someone else for his crimes and tricked Teacher Pan into trusting him, and used Teacher Pan to attain his goal?"
The investigator didn't answer Fei Du's question directly. He only calmly said, "That's all possible."
In sum, the evidence currently pointed to Fan Siyuan. After all, it was an unquestionable fact that he'd committed murder and absconded, and Fei Du and Pan Yunteng had confirmed the fact that Fan Siyuan hadn't died. But for the investigation team, the disappearances of Su Cheng and Fei Chengyu had made all of this increasingly bewildering.
"Teacher Pan used to be a criminal policeman. Criminal policemen are most particular about evidence and nitpicking logical flaws," Fei Du said. "He wouldn't have been deceived so easily."
The investigator had hoped to hear more valuable information from Fei Du, but when he'd listened to the end, he found that everything was conjecture. In spite of himself, he felt somewhat disappointed and smiled perfunctorily at him. "Perhaps you don't understand him so well.—President Fei, the car's come to pick you up."
"I do understand about him nitpicking logical flaws. I don't mind telling you that when I first turned on my phone, there were quite a few people from school asking me about Teacher Pan's situation. He's been tormenting them over their dissertations for several semesters, and now that they're about to get results, this happens." Fei Du smiled. "Sorry, I'm holding you up."
Saying so, he very urbanely withdrew some steps, then turned towards Luo Wenzhou.
The investigator watched him get into the car, a thought suddenly flashing through his mind. He thought, "Fei Du was just talking to other people about Pan Yunteng? What did they say?"
Perhaps when he got back he'd request the security camera records of Fei Du playing on his phone and comb through them.
Luo Wenzhou had seen Fei Du standing at the door talking to the investigator, so he hadn't gone over. His face calm, he stood waiting in front of the car. Likely because he'd been leading a vagabond life and resting badly for some days in a row, he now felt somewhat dazed, as though his field of vision was constantly narrowing. At last it was only the height and width of one person—just about large enough to fit Fei Du, wrap around him, draw in close bit by bit.
But this was broad daylight, with the investigator's gaze like a searchlight, and of course Luo Wenzhou hadn't come by himself—before leaving, Lu Jia had given him the contact information for a bunch of Fei Du's people. Now, their people were everywhere: at the corner, across the street, in a parking lot nearby, even the "peddler" hurriedly riding an electric tricycle.—Luo Wenzhou really couldn't do anything inappropriate with everyone watching, so he restrained himself, opened the car door, and lightly touched Fei Du's shoulder. When his hand fell on him, his heart, hanging suspended for days, fell back into his chest. Luo Wenzhou breathed out silently.
Fei Du's gaze met his bloodshot eyes and quietly said, "I'll drive."
Luo Wenzhou didn't make a sound, nodding silently. When he couldn't see Fei Du in person, he was like a machine operating at high speed, with nicotine and anxiety for stimulants, letting him simultaneously process countless pieces of information, run around without sleep or rest, ignoring day and night.
But now, the suppressed grief and indignation, along with the boundless exhaustion, suddenly intensified and surged up, all of it submerging him. His mind empty, Luo Wenzhou was pushed into the passenger's seat by Fei Du. He quietly said, "We found one of their strongholds yesterday, caught Zhu Feng and Yang Xin, as well as the driver who contacted you. While arresting them, Xiao Wu…Xiao Wu…"
At this point, as if he'd forgotten how to speak, he repeated himself over and over.
Fei Du paused, then reached out a hand to cover his eyes. "You've had it hard."
At his movement, Luo Wenzhou closed his eyes. Fei Du glanced all around, then quickly leaned over and pecked the corner of his mouth. "Rest. I'll wake you if anything happens."
Not making a sound, Luo Wenzhou leaned back in his seat. The hand covering his eyes moved away, and he instantly felt untethered, reaching out his arm and laying it on Fei Du.
At some point he drifted off. Then he was woken by the sound of his ringtone.
The moment he was startled awake, Luo Wenzhou felt he'd missed a step coming down from a height. He gave a start and reached out nearly in a panic, scrunching up a handful of stiff wool coat. Fei Du gently held his wrist, rubbing it with the pads of his fingers.
Luo Wenzhou turned his head to look at him, and his floating soul answered the force of gravity, returning once more to its place. He pressed down on his temple and turned on the speaker. "Yes, I'm here."
"We just finished interrogating Zhu Feng," Lang Qiao said. "Zhu Feng admitted that she dressed up as a school janitor, tailed Wang Xiao, and used a recording to mislead her. She said it was so that evil would be rewarded with evil. It's one link in Teacher's great plan. Zhu Feng's attitude is very bad, she's very defensive, and she doesn't trust us a bit.—Also, she revealed a piece of information I thought I should let you know at once."
"What?" Luo Wenzhou said.
"Zhu Feng's husband was killed going out, and later the killer was arrested. But afterwards, in the course of the interrogation, the killer was found to be incompetent, and the matter ended with the killer being sent to a mental hospital—Zhu Feng maintains that there was some plot there, that the criminal was swapped out."
"What does swapped out mean?" Luo Wenzhou said.
"Zhu Feng was unable to accept the judgement that the killer wouldn't have to pay with his life. She attempted to infiltrate Anding Hospital and assassinate the killer. Anding Hospital's management was lax, and in fact she managed to get in. The reason she didn't act was that she discovered that the man being kept in the mental hospital wasn't the person who'd killed her husband. Zhu Feng believes that this killer bought off all the public security organs in one fell swoop, and we faked the evidence of his mental disability and found someone who looked very similar to him to take his place in the hospital, while he remained at liberty. So the police and the courts are all rogues cut from the same cloth, all worthless."
Luo Wenzhou was subdued by the scope of this conspiracy theory. "Bought off all the public security organs in one fell swoop?"
"Don't look at me," Fei Du said. "I couldn't afford it."
"No…wait." Luo Wenzhou thought about it. "When Zhu Feng says we found someone who looked 'very similar' to be a substitute…what's the plot? Identical twins? Plastic surgery? Anyway, if he was very similar, how did she know the criminal had been swapped out? Slight changes in details of physical appearance may well have been due to being hospitalized and taking medication. Some people change a lot when their surroundings change."
"Wait a bit, boss." After Lang Qiao had spoken, a while passed, and she sent Luo Wenzhou a recording.
Fei Du had already stopped the car in the parking spot outside of Luo Wenzhou's house. He stuck his hand out of the window and made a gesture. The vehicles that had stealthily escorted them the whole way each dispersed to where they'd come from, standing by in the area. Luo Wenzhou opened the recording. There was a woman's hoarse voice on it.
"My husband was called Yu Bin, the 'civil and military' Bin11. He was an art teacher… He was very honest, good-tempered, none of the students he taught had anything bad to say about him. He only taught, didn't have office hours, so he had a good deal of free time, so he did all the grocery shopping and cooking. We went out together that morning. He was going to buy groceries, and that was on my way to work. Right after we parted, I remembered he had a class that evening, and I hadn't taken my keys, so I turned back to find him. I heard people shouting something from far away, I went over, and the crowd suddenly started to riot. People were screaming, children crying… Then a man all covered in blood, carrying a knife, charged right at me! I froze. I remember he was pretty tall, pretty bulky, with dirt all over him and his hair a mess. His hair looked like a mop, all in tufts, like the tramps living under bridges… I didn't know the blood on him came from my Da-Bin, or I…I would have…
"My mind went blank. I heard someone shouting, 'Run, a lunatic is killing people!' I had no time to react. I saw him go towards me and pushed my bicycle towards him in fright. The handlebar pulled up his sleeve, and I saw a long scar on his arm that looked like a centipede."
A police officer on the recording said, "This information isn't in the old file. You didn't tell the police?"
"Because no one asked me. He committed a murder in front of a crowd, everybody saw. Someone called the security guards from nearby, and the police, the security guards, and also some brave and warm-hearted passersby all chased after him. They caught him quickly. The knife was in his hand, there was blood splashed on him. There was nothing worth investigating. I never thought that someone could play a trick with a case like this. The guy in the mental hospital didn't know anything, he couldn't even understand human speech. At first glance he looked like the man who'd killed my husband, but he didn't have that scar on his arm!"
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Author's note:
(11) 斌, made up of the characters ⽂ and 武, which mean civil and military; no one's going to directly call attention to it apart from this, but it's the same character as the kid Feng Bin's given name.